


The Trap

by mdxwriter



Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-26
Updated: 2019-01-27
Packaged: 2019-07-17 16:52:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 63
Words: 115,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16099814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mdxwriter/pseuds/mdxwriter
Summary: Advanced alien technology has given Rachel a second chance.But her memories are scrambled, and she's lost her ability to morph.It's not all bad! Like her friends tell her: she won the war, and she's about to return to Earth a glorified hero. All the awful things she did (even if she can't quite remember them) were worth it.But as Rachel is about to find out: nothing is what it seems, and no one can be trusted. She's going to have to outsmart forces greater than her if she wants to keep her resurrection more than short-lived, and uncover a terrifying secret buried inside her own mind.





	1. Awake

**Author's Note:**

> This story is a direct sequel to the Animorphs series, written by a hardcore fan for hardcore fans.
> 
> I'm writing this as a writing challenge to myself. New chapters will be posted every two days at 9 p.m. ET until completion, even if I don't have an audience.
> 
> First time writer here. Constructive feedback welcome, suggestions appreciated.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Somewhere in the universe, a 16-year-old girl struggles to remember her name.

My name is —

!

_I don’t know what my name is!_

I sucked air into my chest as my whole body heaved. It felt rigid, like had been bound tight inside something for a long, long time, and now every piece of me was slowly shifting apart. My hands and my feet clenched, my neck twisted. I choked air and pushed it out in huge, loud gulps. 

_What is my name?_

But I _had_  a name — I knew this, in spite of the insane confused _!!!_ terror that ping-ponged through my head. I _knew_ what a _name_ was, and I _knew_ I had one. I knew that I was breathing air, and a sharp pain was shooting through a part of me called the _lower back_ , and I _knew_ that I was a sixteen-year-old girl who had a _mother_ and a _father._ I knew a million _things_ about myself, but they were facts upon facts, devoid of context. And as soon as I became aware of this, I immediately became aware that two of these facts were in direct conflict with each other: 

I am _alive._ I should be _dead._

More sensory information. I felt my fingers when they flexed before, and I was aware of the nails pressed into my palms — but now I can see them shriveled up like claws. I was lying on the floor, and I wore some kind of robe, and my right leg stuck out of it crooked, my knee bent the wrong way. I felt that the way it is bent is wrong, and as soon as the pain registered, I stretched it — too far, more pain! I tried to relax, tried to slow my movement, but everything shudders and twists.

And then I began to hear.

“The _ixcila_ has bonded. Reduce current to four, increase if responses diminish below the acceptable threshold.”

That voice. I knew that voice. It belonged to someone I trusted, and it filled me with calm in the middle of this cloud of empty facts. I pushed my mind toward it, tried to focus on the sound —

“Circulatory system functioning, heart rate slowing. It seems to have completely taken over, as expected. Detecting trace levels of Geon…”

But I couldn’t see the face it belonged to, though it was so _close_ , I knew it. It was a man, but he didn’t sound old. I _knew_ him, I _knew_ him. If I thought hard enough, if I pushed my thoughts to it —

Something rippled through my memory — a face! A boy, my age, brown hair, cut short, his face childlike, arms thin. He looked like me, I knew this, we had the same shape of eyes. Was he my brother?

_You don’t have a brother_.

A fact, absent of context, but a fact none the less, and a real piece of something I could work with. This boy was _not_ my brother in blood, but he wasn’t far from it, neither biologically or in spirit. 

The face in my mind looked so sad.

His tried to slip out of my thoughts but I grabbed onto it, gritting my teeth even as my body thrashed and fought. I could see his mouth moving — _he was saying my name_ , I could almost hear it, if I pushed, just a little more, I could have it!

But the more I pulled at his memory, the more something resisted. My thoughts rose to meet it, but I might as well have wrestled a wave, with the way it pulled back into nothing. I screamed in frustration and punched a fist into the air. My scream sounded so _good_ , primal, angry, like a feral animal tearing itself out of me. I screamed again, louder, forced spit and rage out of my throat, again, and again, an endless, beautiful scream of fury.

“What is she doing? Is something wrong?”

“Vitals are good, far as I can tell, integration was successful.”

<She’s fine.>

The voice cut through my roar — I heard it inside of my head. It was called _thought-speak_ , and it was a telepathic, effective method of communication that made perfect sense to me, even while I simultaneously knew it was not natural. But it was intrinsic to me, and what was more important — _I knew that voice_.

But I didn’t know who had made it, although it was close, _so close_ , and I wanted to know so badly. And all my uncertainty and all my fear funneled my anger. I moved my hands with purpose. I kicked my legs over the table. I wasn’t going to let this happen, I wasn’t going to be kept in the dark like this. I knew those voices and I knew I could know myself, and I was going to cut through the fog of my brain even if it killed me.

I ordered my foot to move, planted it under myself, pushed against it. I stumbled forward, thrust my hand against the wall and lifted as useless facts fell from the clouds in my mind like fat raindrops: _The Gap has sales in the spring, Abercrombie is better in the fall; when on the balance beam, it’s better to focus on something far away; always tell mom you’re going over to Melissa’s house_. 

The questions I don’t understand (who is Melissa? When was I on a balance beam?) vanish into the white-hot rage that channeled through me. I stood, and I snarled.

Two human men stood in front of me, an Andalite, and a red-tailed hawk. I knew an Andalite was an _alien_ and that this red-tailed hawk was not a bird, but I don’t know _why_ I knew it, and it irritates me, so I lifted my head, looked at them, and yelled: “Who the _hell_ are you?”

<It’s her,> said the voice in my head, and this time, somehow, I could tell that it’s coming from the hawk. It was _talking_ to me somehow, and even stranger: I understood it could do that, it was _right_ that it was doing that.

And then the bird-not-a-bird said something that cut me into pieces.

<That’s her,> The bird said. <That’s our Rachel.>

_Rachel._

!

My name is Rachel!


	2. Old friends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rachel, awake and afraid, slowly pieces together the identities of her old friends.

I still didn’t know who they were.

The man with the sad face wasn’t smiling. The other man, shorter than him, with curly hair, had a big fat grin stretching from ear to ear. A scar wrapped itself around his face. The Andalite traced small fingers across a screen I couldn’t see, and the bird stared directly at me.

Something about the animal’s stare… it made me uneasy. He knew my name, how did he know my name? 

“Who are you?” I asked. I tried to step forward, but my legs hadn’t quite found their rhythm. I nearly fell, but I caught myself against the wall.

“It’s okay — Rachel, it’s okay,” Sad Face said. To the Andalite: “Ax, Tell her what’s happening.”

<Everything in your body is… rebooting.> The voice came from the Andalite, the one they had called —

_Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill._ That was his full name! Another fact plunked into a proper place. A wave of satisfaction passed through me; my head was a jumble of all these things, a whole mess of puzzle pieces, disassembled, and it felt so _good_ when one of them landed in the right spot.

<Her muscles will take some time to relearn motor functions, but less than you might imagine. Experiencing no resistance, the _ixcila_ will strengthen its connection at an exponential rate.> The eyes on his stalks met mine. <You may want to explain quickly, she might be capable of attacking us in only a few minutes.>

The shorter man turned to Ax, his mouth agape. “Really Ax? A _joke_? Now? You make jokes _now?_ ”

<It is as you say… a happy moment, Marco.>

_Plunk._

I remembered him. Kind of. I knew he was best friends with Sad Face, and that the three of us had hung out in the mall, and… a barn?

I blinked. That last image didn’t make any sense, and it dissolved away, slowly. I felt something toward him… suspicion. I had known Marco, but from the uneasiness gripping me, I’m not sure I ever _liked_ him.

“Hey Xena, you remember me, right? You remember how cute I used to be?” He traced a finger along the scar on his face. “I got this one while saving a trio of supermodels in the middle of a hurricane—”

“Not now,” Jake said.

_“Jake,”_ I blurted. _His name was Jake._ He was my cousin, I knew that now — his dad and my mom were brother and sister. He was the leader of —

There it was again — that push back in my brain, making me grit my teeth from the pain. Some truth about Jake wasn’t ready to re-enter my brain, and it pulled away as quickly as it had come.

“That’s right,” Jake said, and for the first time, a smile crept across his face. “I’m Jake — you remember me?”

“Kind of,” I said, even as stars darted in front of my eyes from the pain of trying to remember. “I’m… going to need some help.”

“It’s okay, it’ll come — we weren’t sure how much you’d remember, at first,” Jake said. “No one’s ever done this before.”

I started to ask _Done what before?_ But I stopped myself. I was stronger than I had been a minute ago, but I wasn’t ready to hear it said out loud, a truth I knew without knowing how I knew it.

_I am alive._

_I was dead._

“What _is_ the last thing you remember?” Marco asked.

I blinked, shook my head. “There’s… a lot in my head, but it’s all messed up. I don’t know when anything happened. I can’t…”

_I was standing between Jake and Marco, staring at a light in the sky. We were surrounded by wreckage, broken concrete, rebar, faded orange cones._

“A… construction site,” I whispered, struggling to hold onto it. “Were we at a construction site?”

Marco and Jake exchanged a glance.

<It may not seem like it, but this is a good sign,> Ax said. <Her memories are disjointed, but they seem to be intact, and I suspect with time, they will settle into place. The construction site was… an important event in your lives. It does not surprise me that it would rise above the others, in prominence.>

“What happened there?” I asked. “Why was it so important?”

<It’s where we all met,> the bird-not-a-bird said. <Well… it’s where you and I met. It’s not exactly where all this started, but it’s close enough.>

I looked at him. I looked at the way his feathers fell along the back of his head. I looked at the talons. The penetrating stare. It was… soothing, somehow.

“I know you,” I said. “You came to my window.”

<Many times.>

“You’re… not a bird.”

<I… I’m not.>

“But you’re not human, either.”

<Do you remember my name?>

It came to me then: it rose like a warm thermal under wings.

“Tobias,” I said. “Your name is Tobias.”

I stepped forward, my legs worked now, _plunk plunk plunk_ , another few puzzle pieces locked into place. Suddenly I wanted to be close to them. I wanted to wrap my arms around Jake and Marco, run my fingers across Tobias’s back. If I could remember these bits and pieces from hearing their names, a touch could bring back more — and now I _needed_ to remember. I needed to remember why the memory of the bird at my window at midnight calmed me. I wanted to touch them, to be next to them, to feel them alive —

<Stop!> Ax said, and I did.

“Come on,” Marco said, grinning. “It would have been funny.”

Jake ignored him. “There’s a force field, Rachel. Right in front of you. It won’t hurt you if you touch it, unless you smack into it.”

“Oh,” I said. I lifted my hand in front of me and pushed forward; the hair on my arms stood up. The air seemed to give a little bit, before firming up, under my palm. “Um… why?”

The floor trembled beneath me, as something shook far, far away. It continued for several seconds, a shaking, vibrating tremor. Marco leaned back against the wall during it. He was gritting his teeth, and he looked uneasy.

Finally, the temblor stopped. Jake was noticeably paler.

“What was that?” I asked.

“We have a lot to tell you,” Jake said. “And we don’t have much time.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is a direct sequel to the Animorphs series, written by a hardcore fan for hardcore fans.
> 
> The next chapter will be posted on Saturday, Sept. 29 at 9 p.m. EDT.
> 
> Constructive feedback welcome, suggestions appreciated.


	3. Located

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rachel is surprised to discover where she is.

Something was wrong.

It was the way Jake wouldn’t quite look at me, the way Marco’s smile had become strained. It was that gentle trembling, faded now.

<There’s another place we need to take you,> Tobias said. <We need to run some tests to make sure — well, maybe Ax can explain it better.>

<Your body could be unstable,> Ax said. <Put simply — what has been done to you has never been done before, not like this. We don’t know the status of your nervous system — the slightest exposure to another person, and you could become violently ill and die.>

He must have seen the stricken look on my face, because he said quickly: <Even if that is the case — and I doubt it is — there are ways around it. That’s why we want to run tests, physical, mental ones.>

Something _was_ wrong about this: “I don’t remember you, not really,” I said. “I know that I _know_ you, and I know that I _trust_ you — but you’re not doctors.”

“Yeah,” Marco said. “We aren’t the doctors. There’s people telling us this stuff. They aren’t far away, but we thought you might go psycho Amazon Warrior grizzly on them. They’re these dudes in these super duper hazmat suits, and even I think it’s a little freaky, like something out of ET.” He pointed behind him, to a little black square on the wall. “They’re watching us now.”

I looked at it, squinted. I didn’t like being watched by someone I didn’t know, even if they had my best interests at heart.

“It’s an experimental project,” Jake said. “What you need to know is that we’re here, and you’re safe, and we’re going to help you get through this. We’ll answer all your questions — but it really, really would be best to do these tests Ax is talking about.”

“To make sure your head won’t explode or anything,” Marco said.

< _That_ is a physical impossibility, > Ax said. <While the pressure of her cranial fluid is likely affected by the activity of the _ixcila_ , it is highly unlikely that —>

“I get it, Ax,” I said. “He’s messing with me. It’s Marco. You did that… didn’t you?”

The smile faded as he met my eyes. “Yeah,” he said. “We had… banter.”

<You two kept us going through some hard times,> Tobias said, and I heard something in his tone, a desperation that tugged at something inside of me. <Let’s not talk about it now. I want to know that she’s okay, OK?>

“Yeah,” Jake said. “Hey, in the other room over — we’re ready to go. Can you open up the door, divide the hall up so we can go with her?”

From the ceiling came a woman’s voice: calm and precise. “The field has been extended. Sterilization is complete. Please proceed down the hallway to the facility.”

A wide door slid open to my left. I felt the pressure in the room change; suddenly, I could breathe a little better.

“Well, come on, Jake,” Marco said. “Lead the way, like you always do.”

Something shook the building again as I stepped through the door. I looked questioningly at Jake, who had sort of followed me, pressed to the right side of the door frame. In the light of the hallway, I could actually see the force field. It had a light reddish tint to it, almost like sky at sunset.

“That shaking —“ I started to say.

“Yeah — see, here’s the thing,” Marco said. “We aren’t on Earth.”

<We are on a planet called Ket,> Tobias said. <It has — well, there’s a lot going on. A lot of volcanic activity on a lot of it, that’s why you’re feeling so much shaking. It’s not a very pretty place, but the thermals are nice.>

<What we’ve done required a massive amount of easily accessible energy,> Ax said. <The scientists been able to harvest it from the magma pools beneath the surface, but they aren’t that deep. This facility is… somewhat unstable, and none of us desires to stay here for long.>

“Got it,” I said. “We could get sucked into a lava pit any minute. So you want to make sure you can get me out of this place without dying.”

“Ding ding! Give her the prize, Trebek,” Marco said.

<It would take longer than a minute to be incinerated here,> Ax said. <At least fifteen.>

“It’s all right, I’m feeling fine. I can ace this test.” Something was still nibbling at the edges of my brain, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. “Where did you say we were?”

“Ket,” Marco said.

I knew that name.

“Hang on,” I said, stopping in the middle of the hallway. “I… Have we been here before?”

My head had begun to pound. I was trying to remember. There was something there, I was _sure_ of it.

“No,” Jake said slowly. They all watched me closely now. “No — it’s not an easy place to get to, from Earth. There isn’t much out here.”

“There weren’t — psychic lizards underwater?” The words spilled out of my mouth, and wow, they sounded stupid.

“Nope, there’s hardly any water on this planet,” Marco said. “You’re thinking of Leera. We went there, a long time ago.”

“I don’t remember that,” I said. 

I let it go. “Forget it, let’s just get this done. I want to get out of here.”

“It’s here,” Jake said. He pressed his hand against a panel on the wall. Another doorway opened, hissing softly as it did so. Inside, I saw several figures clothed in sterile white suits

“You okay to be around someone not us, Xena?” Marco asked.

“I’m fine,” I said, but I wasn’t, not really. They _did_ look like the guys in ET. I didn’t like that I couldn’t see through their masks; they were just featureless, black plates completely covering their faces. They kind of had a matte finish, so I couldn’t even see my reflection. It was like I just disappeared into it.

I quashed down my unease. This wouldn’t take long, Ax had said. A few minutes, a few questions, and I could go home.

“Let’s do it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is a direct sequel to the Animorphs series, written by a hardcore fan for hardcore fans.
> 
> The next chapter will be posted on Monday, Oct. 1 at 9 p.m. EDT.
> 
> Constructive feedback welcome, suggestions appreciated.


	4. Elfangor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More pieces fall into place as the Animorphs prepare a test to assess Rachel's new neural structure.

I’m not a big fan of medical stuff. When I was nine, my mom brought me into the clinic, and I screamed at the doctor when he said he needed to attach electrodes to my kneecaps. He said I had nothing to be afraid of, but he didn’t understand that I wasn’t afraid. I was just mad, and I wasn’t good at hiding it. My mom had to step in, look me in the eyes and tell me that if I didn’t knock it off, we would be there all day.

_Sometimes we take our knocks_ , Naomi had said. _Chin up and get it done._

I was going to take that lesson and apply it here, even if it felt wrong to do so. I didn’t remember why my mom brought me to the doctor, or why they’d needed to run current through my legs, or what, if anything, had come of it. But I remembered what my mom had said, and I remembered her name ( _Naomi)_ , so that was something, I guess.

The guys who wired me up didn’t talk much, and it was weird. Jake said the suits were designed to communicate just with each other via radio, so there’s no real way for them to talk to me unless they yelled really, really loud. So Ax relayed commands to me from behind the force field.

The first round of stuff was pretty basic. They stuck a thermometer in my ear, a needle in my arm, a cotton swab in my cheek. They gave me some privacy and let me change into a T-shirt and shorts, and while featureless grey isn’t really my color, I don’t think it looks terrible.

The second round of tests was going to be a little weirder. Ax said they needed to study the minefield of memories inside my brain, which would determine if my neural pathways were functioning correctly. He started to go into some medical mumbo jumbo, which Marco summarized by saying: “We think we can get your memories back faster if we know where they’re at.”

My mind was basically a city without addresses: my friends believed none of it had been damaged by the wild process they put me through, but all the street signs and layouts that take a lifetime to map needed to be laid out again. My brain should be able to do its own reconstruction, but no one was really sure of that. The theory was that, by asking questions related to specific parts of my life, we might be able to speed this part of the process along.

It made sense to me, in a crazy way. The simple act of hearing my own name had given me a sort of anchor that other fragments of Rachel were slowly attaching to. It would be easier to fill in the connective tissue between the memories by feeding me objective truths.

Jake said: “You, me, Marco and Tobias all went to school together. Do you remember any of our classes?”

I remembered walking into a boring, flat building with heavy glass doors that would hit you in the butt if you weren’t paying attention. I remembered that I had to walk by Jake’s locker after first period, and Marco often stood near him.

“I remember social studies,” I said. “Taught by… Paloma? Yeah. She was good. I liked her.”

“Not _that_ good, she made me retake her class…” Marco muttered.

“What did you do outside of school?”

The answer came so fast, I didn’t think about it: “I’d go to the mall, duh. Shopping.”

Marco barked out a laugh, and even Jake had a flicker of a smile, before he got serious. “What do you remember about the construction site?”

<Jake,> Tobias said. <I’m not sure we should —>

“We have to, Tobias.”

<All I’m saying is — is it such a bad thing if — if she doesn’t remember all of it?>

“You don’t get to decide what I don’t remember,” I said. How dare he. “This is my head we’re talking about.”

“She’s right, Tobias,” Jake said, and he gave the bird an annoyed look that I somehow knew was very unlike Jake. “We’ve already made enough decisions for her… She deserves a say.”

<You feel guilty. I get it.>

“I —“ Jake shook his head. “Not now, Tobias. It’s up to her. If she doesn’t want to dig into something, she doesn’t have to. That’s the end of it.”

Tobias didn’t reply.

“The construction site,” Jake said. “You mentioned it before.”

“It… it’s hard to think about…”

<Close your eyes and focus,> Ax said.

I did that. “We were there, together. Er. You weren’t there, Ax. But…”

Another name curled out of the fog in my mind, unresistant and quiet. It was wrapped in thick layers of sadness, and when it finally landed on my tongue, I felt my eyes well with tears.

“ _Elfangor.”_

Jake leaned forward. “Do you remember him? Do you remember what he told us? Do you remember what he did?”

“Wait,” I said. “I need a minute.”

Facts were eager to break down the walls this time, too many of them, all at once. That name seemed to be some kind of key to a lock, and once spoken, it had twisted and opened. A spaceship drifted down from the sky and the Andalite Elfangor emerged from it and collapsed.

“He was your brother,” I said to Ax. “He… died. He died _horribly_. I don’t remember how. I’m so sorry, Ax.”

<It is an old wound,> Ax said. I was surprised at the level of indifference in his tone. <I have made peace with it.>

“He told us we were in danger,” I said. “He said we were under attack.” I tried to dig into that, tried to remember who he told us was a threat, but the memory curled and shriveled and scurried away. I decided to leave it alone, for now. “And then… he gave us… a gift…” 

My face screwed up into a snarl. “No! No, that’s wrong, isn’t it? It wasn’t a gift. It was… it was a weapon.”

Jake’s leg was shaking, but I don’t think he realized it. Marco still had that grin, but it was frozen across his face, the scar distorted across his face. Tobias looked at the floor, and Ax seemed intently focused on the screen in front of him.

“What did he give us? I don’t remember that.”

<I’ll show you,> Tobias said.

And then the bird became the boy I loved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For hardcore fans, by a hardcore fans.
> 
> Next chapter to be released Wednesday, Oct. 3 at 9 p.m.
> 
> Feedback and comments appreciated! Ya'll are keeping the wind in me!


	5. Resurrection

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rachel learns how she was brought back from the dead.

The first thing that changed was his face. 

Tobias’s beak expanded, and the feathers dissolved into flesh. Dirty blond hair sprouted from the top of his head in a comical fashion, and his eyes — the human eyes that I remembered — grew from stretched out beads. His legs stretched as he expanded vertically, and as they did, they made a terrible crunching sound as bones shifted and changed. I barely heard it; I couldn’t look away.

And a minute or so later, there he was.

“You can’t — you can’t stay like that,” I said. “There was — two hours —“

“Two hours, yep,” Tobias said. His face was oddly slack. “We can’t stay past morph for more than two hours, or else —“

“You get trapped in it,” I finished. “You can’t go back.”

“Yeah,” he said.

“And that happened to you, and now you’re a bird.”

“I’m a red-tailed hawk, but — yeah.”

“But you can go back to human — at least, for two hours.”

“That’s right, Rachel,” Jake said. “Do you remember how Tobias regained the ability to morph?”

I closed my eyes again and tried to concentrate. But this time — nothing came. Not a fact, lurking just beyond my memory — _nothing_. I _knew_ that Tobias was a hawk who could morph his former human form, and other animals, but I couldn’t remember how that had come to be.

“No,” I said. “I have no idea. There’s… nothing there.”

Jake smiled, but he looked pained. “It’ll come.”

“Can… Can I still… morph?”

<No,> Ax said. <The morphing technology would not have carried over. But you could regain the ability, with another _escafil_ device. >

No one spoke for a while then. I took a deep breath. I knew it was time to ask the question I was afraid of asking.

“What did you do to me?” I asked. “I shouldn’t… I was… I was dead.” It felt good to say out loud. “Now I’m not.”

Ax looked at Jake expectantly. Jake nodded.

<In simple terms, we have built a construct of your body. That is, your physical form is identical to the genetic material you were born with. Creating your body, and aligning it to the appropriate age, was no easy feat. It was for this reason we came to Ket. The energy is easily harvested and directed here.>

“You cloned me,” I said. “I’m like… a dinosaur in _Jurassic Park_.”

<No. In that film, embryos hatched from eggs and developed normally. You were not born, you were built, assembled from thousands of minute instructions encoded in your DNA.>

“So I’m… a robot?”

<Your genetic pattern is identical to that of a human — >

“You’re made of skin, Rachel,” Marco chimed in. “Skin and blood and bone assembled from matter. They had all the raw materials, the cells, all the little pieces that make us up. They just put them together in the form of you.” He must have seen how bewildered I looked, because he said: “You’re as human as I am — it’s easier if you just think of yourself that way.”

“Okay,” I said. My thoughts were spinning, but I was going to get to the end of this. I could absorb it all later. “So you made another me. These hands — my feet, okay. But… that’s not the whole story, is there? This is why my mind is screwed up.”

<Correct.> Ax said. <One cannot assemble a mind in the same way a body does, at least, we know of no way to do so. Consciousness, having never been deconstructed, cannot be put back together in a predictable manner. However, it is possible to generate a facsimile.>

“Do you remember the Arn?” Tobias asked.

“No.”

“They were masters of biotechnology, from the Hork Bajir homeworld.”

“The — what?”

“They were — never mind. The Arn were an alien race who figured out a way to capture and store the personality and brainwaves of a person. It could be taken while they were alive or shortly after they died. These things were stored inside a device called an _ixcila._ These memories could be transferred into another person. But… they’re dicey. Once transferred, it can be hard to get the _ixcila_ to leave. It was never intended as a path to immortality. It was a war weapon, meant for generals to preserve their knowledge across conflicts.”

“The _ixcila_ … you made one of me?”

“Not us,” Jake said. “Someone else… a Chee. Another alien, ah, a robot alien. Do you remember them?”

Another blank hole in my memory. I shook my head.

“That’s okay. We don’t know why it did it. We didn’t even know they had access to the Arn tech. The Chee made… modifications… to the process. It has caused some problems.”

“So let me get this straight,” I said. “You built a body for me out of raw materials. That’s what I’ve got now. And then you stuck this… _ixcila…_ inside it?”

<That is accurate,> Ax said.

“So I’m — what I think of as me — is the _ixcila?_ ”

“Yeah, but this is where it really gets weird,” Marco said.

_THIS is where it gets weird?_ I thought.

“We’re in uncharted territory — no one has ever grown a body like this, one that didn’t have a mind, and then tried to fill it up with the _ixcila_. In theory… you should be better off. The _ixcila_ has no competition, so… nothing to expel.” Marco pointed at me. “You been brought from the dead, Xena, or close to it.”

I took a deep breath.

“I want to know one thing,” I said. “And I want you to tell the truth — no matter how bad it is.

“I want to know how I died.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the comments, I'm so happy ya'll are enjoying this!
> 
> I'm keeping several chapters ahead, hence the staggered releases. It's giving me breathing room edit and respond to feedback. Hopefully you don't mind the serial nature of things - I'm going to do my best to stick to two-day release cycles.
> 
> Next chapter will be released Friday, Oct. 5, 9 p.m. EDT.
> 
> Thanks for all the feedback!


	6. Peacetime

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rachel learns of her death, and the Animorphs explain to her what happened after the war.

First, they told me about the Animorphs.

I mean, they glossed over a lot of stuff, it was hard to get too detailed. This “remapping my mental state” wasn’t just frustrating — it was exhausting.

Marco dropped the gist on me: “We turned into animals so we could kill bodysnatching, ooze-filled slugs stealthily invading Earth.”

He kept talking, but I raised my hand in a _STOP_ motion — pain was shooting through my head as it tried to absorb everything at once.

“You’re going to need to unpack that,” I said. 

He spoke slower, and a few things settled firmly, decisively into place: I had frequently became a grizzly bear. We were forced to fight in secret. Those slugs were called _Yeerks._

When Jake spoke their name, a spike of rage and adrenaline passed through me like an electric shock. The Yeerks had ruined lives and destroyed families, undermined trust and enslaved minds. They were _evil_ , and I had fought (literally) tooth-and-nail to destroy them, right to the very end.

_And what an end it had been._

Jake was the one who told me how it shook out, and every word caused him pain. He spoke in a halting, jerking fashion, like he was dragging the words out of his lips. 

He had come to me secretly, the night before I was killed. I was to board the Blade Ship, alone, with no one else knowing, as a bulwark against the possibility of armed Yeerks escaping Earth. If the other Animorphs could take out the Blade Ship before that happened, I might never have to demorph, and I would spend the last battle hiding away as a fly. 

Jake and I both knew that wouldn’t happen.

When the Blade Ship became an issue, I was ready. I followed my orders, and I killed as many of them as I could before they killed me. That included Jake’s brother, Tom, who had been taken as a host early in the invasion.

To Jake’s credit, he never broke eye contact with me when he told me what I had done. He barely even blinked, even when tears began to leak out of his eyes. I don’t think he even noticed them. They ran down his cheeks slowly, leaving glistening trails down to his chin.

Inevitably, I had been overcome. Forced to demorph, and defenseless as a 16-year-old barefoot teenager in a leotard, I had been slaughtered.

I couldn’t remember any of it.

Jake’s words shimmied into the fog of my brain, but they always came back with nothing in tow. I remembered our enemy. I remembered being a grizzly bear. I remembered Tom. But all my memories were from before or during the war — the end of it was completely shrouded in that brain mist. 

When it came to the day that I died, I had no memories at all.

*

It took them longer to tell me what happened after I died, and several more minutes for me to absorb it. But when all was said and done, what I understood was this:There had been a war, and we had done things to win it. I had been sacrificed so we could succeed.

And I was… _happy_.

Not happy as in, I wanted to “cheer from the rooftops, pop champagne New-Years-Eve-style” happy. Happy as in: I’d kicked ass and saved the day. I successfully took down the Blade Ship from the inside out, allowing Jake and the rest to board it and neutralize the remnants of the Yeerk separatists. Tobias wept over my body. I had had a state funeral, Jake told me, and my body had toured the capitals of Earth. My death outfits had even been chosen by Ralph Lauren and Dolche, in keeping with my fashion tastes. I had died as a human defending my home, and through my martyrdom, I had been elevated as a symbol of the human race.

What could be a more fitting fate for a soldier?

As they described this to me — as they described the legions of adoring fans, the prevalence of the “New Rachel” haircut, the christening of the _U.S.S. Rachel_ battleship — a sense of relief washed over me. It came from the cloud of fog in my brain, and even if I couldn’t yet determine how all the puzzle pieces in my brain fit together, I knew this peace came from them. All those things we had done — all those things I had done, in the service of the war — _all of them had been worth it._

Then there came a time where Marco paused, and suddenly did not know what to say next, and no one else knew what to say. And we just stared at each other for a few seconds, before I said: “What about all of you? What happened — how are you all doing?”

“We’re — we’re great,” Jake said, and a full-fledged grin across his face, so wide it was almost too intense. “We like to hang out together on the _Rachel_ when she’s docked. And all the Yeerks are dead. Every single one.”

“Uh,” I said. The intensity of his statement didn’t seem to fit with the almost manic grin across Jake’s face. “What about your parents? What did they… I mean… with Tom…”

The smile slid away. “Yeah,” he said. “It was hard for a while, for a long time. But they understand now. They know why we did what we did.”

“Yeah, okay.” I turned to Tobias. “And… what about… what have you…”

“I live in a house in the country, with my mom,” Tobias said. “Loren, she — she survived the war, and we spend a lot of time together now. It’s been good. We go flying together, a lot.”

“Tob — Tobias?”

Marco was looking at Tobias like he’d never seen him before.

“Yeah?” Tobias said.

Marco blinked, stepped backward.

“Nothing, sorry,” he said. “I, uh, forgot, is all.” He was shaking his head back and forth, rubbing his temples.

Tobias turned back to me.

“We wanted you back,” he said. “I… _I_ wanted you back. So when we found out that one of the Chee stowed away on the Blade Ship, and when we found out that it had made an _ixcila…_ when we found out it was possible, we kicked off this project.” He smiled at me in a gaze that was all human, and completely Tobias: shy and vulnerable. “It took us a while to figure it out. But you’re back now. And we can go back to Earth. Everyone is so excited. They’ve planned parades, dinners with world leaders… Everyone wants to meet you.”

He was shaking from happiness. “You saved the world, Rachel. And now the world wants to thank you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know many of you will have questions after this one, but I promise, I have answers coming! 
> 
> I've been debating whether to add this fact, but I will specify one thing about this story: it is canon, essentially a sequel to #54. I don't want to say anything more than that to spoil the upcoming chapters.
> 
> For hardcore fans, by a hardcore fan, I'll be releasing chapters every two days. Next chapter due out Sunday, Oct. 7 EDT.


	7. Decantation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rachel prepares to receive the full extent of her memories.

<Now is the optimal time to begin the decantation,> Ax said.

“Decantation?”

“The Chee who created the _ixcila_ from you— we have it here,” Jake said. “We need its help to complete the process.”

It struck me as odd that Jake kept referring to the Chee as _it_. I remembered they were a race of androids, (and they had something to do with _dogs?_ My life as an Animorph must have been crazy town) but I couldn’t remember what one _looked_ like. Had they considered themselves male, female or somewhere in between? I trusted Jake, sure, but referring to a Chee as _it_ felt… wrong.

<This Chee made modifications to the Arn technology,> Ax said. <Our tests on you have confirmed my suspicions: portions of the _ixcila_ are encoded and inaccessible to you. >

“Why?” I asked, suddenly filled with anger again. No one got to decide what I did and did not remember.

<We don’t know. We have asked it many times, but the Chee was grievously injured during the battle for the Blade Ship. It is incapable of communicating in a way that neither us nor other Chee can interpret. We have placed the Chee in a suspended state. The other Chee have been working on an algorithm to undo the corruption.>

“And you think it can help me? Even if it can’t talk?”

<Yes. The encoding on the _ixcila_ seems to be tied to the DNA signature on the small amounts of organic matter of its body. A human comparison might be a person unlocking a security system with a fingerprint. 

<The full extent of your memories, along with their arrangement, should be restored by coming into simple physical contact with the Chee. Before the construction of your body, we had no way to make this contact.>

“Okay. Got it,” I said. “So my brain has a lock on it. This thing touches me, and it opens up?”

<Correct.>

“Okay. Weird, but okay.”

I heard a hiss from behind me, and felt a cold burst of air enter the room. 

<The decantation pod has been fetched from storage. I have begun the process,> Ax said.

The faceless hazmat suit figures stepped back, looking at something behind me. Turning my head, I saw a large black cylinder rising slowly from the floor, emitting bursts of steam.

<It will take approximately ten of your Earth minutes.>

“I’d say they were everyone’s Earth minutes,” Marco said. “But I guess we ain’t in Kansas anymore.”

The hazmat suits brought out a chair and set it down in front of the decanting tube. They had me sit down in it. They had me wear a headband with sensors, to help monitor my brainwaves or something, Ax said. I just stared at the Chee in the tube for most of it, mesmerized.

The cylinder wasn’t fully opaque. I could see a humanoid shape beneath the tinted glass. It seemed to be floating, unmoving. The hazmat guys shuffled behind me and started to pull colored tubes out of the floor, inserting them into corresponding ports in the cylinder’s base. Lights changed from red to green, and fluid within began to drain out of it.

“How long has it been in there?” I asked.

Hearing no reply from Ax or the others, I turned around.

They stared at me blankly, faces in mid expression. Marco had just overbalanced, and was standing sort of suspended in midair, a look of annoyance on his face. Jake had one eye open slightly larger than the other, and it was almost comical. Ax had one finger on some screen, and was watching it closely, while Tobias was looking at a clock on the wall.

All of them were completely frozen in space and time.

“Well, I certainly never expected to see _you_ again,” someone said behind me. “I shouldn’t be surprised, though. You always _were_ his favorite Animorph.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> By a hardcore fan, for hardcore fans.
> 
> This chapter was shorter, but I promise the upcoming ones will run a bit longer.
> 
> I'm trying to write the scenes to be as succinct as possible — each one has just a single goal. In this one, I accomplish the goal fairly quickly.
> 
> Thanks again for reading, I'm really excited to see what ya'll think of the upcoming twists.
> 
> Next chapter to be released Tuesday, Oct. 9 at 9 p.m. EDT.


	8. The Drode

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An old enemy taunts Rachel.

The thing was weird looking.

Its skin was very dark, almost black. Neon green lined its eyes and mouth (the corners of which were curled back into a sneer). It had two legs, but it barely seemed to be using them, leaning backwards on a short, triangular-shaped tail.

I narrowed my eyes, but some reptilian thing in the back of my brain told me it wasn’t a threat; it held nothing, and the hands were too flimsy to wield a weapon anyway. The only concerning thing was the curling of the mouth, which indicated it knew something I did not.

So, okay. I was facing an alien who seemed to have the ability to freeze time and space, with a whole lot of screws still bouncing around inside my head.

“Hi,” I said cooly. “Do we know each other?”

“You don’t remember me!” The creature said, raising the knobby hands in mock concern. “But we had so many good times together! So many… adventures. You knew me as the Drode. I’m a servant, that is all I am.”

I made a fist with my hand and knocked it lightly against my head. “Sorry bud. Not ringing a bell.” I nodded over to the frozen Animorphs. “What’ve you done to my friends over there?”

The Drode made a throaty, dry raspy sound that I took to be laughter. “Friends! Yes, of course. They have not been harmed. I wanted a few minutes to speak with you alone.”

I lifted my head back, letting my hair fall over my shoulders as dramatically as possible. _I would not show fear_. The Drode seemed to be waiting for me to speak, but I held our stare and refused to blink (mainly because I had no idea what to say, but the Drode didn’t need to know that).

“I am sad you don’t remember me,” the Drode said, tone dripping with condescension. “I wonder what other things you don’t remember?”

The walls and the floor fell away, and I was floating in a perfectly dark, featureless void. The only thing I could see was the Drode, floating in front of me, the rings around its eyes glowing.

_Sometimes we have to take our knocks,_ I reminded myself.

“Do you remember… my master?”

Something was approaching us — or we were approaching it, there was no sense of scale or direction in the middle of this nothing. It was vast, spherical and mechanical, inspiring the words _Death Star_ to appear in my mind frustratingly, without context. This Death Star was filled with enormous metallic canyons stretching deep into its core. Its surface teemed with activity; I saw vehicles pulsating around, individual beings moving, toiling, working toward indecipherable goals. The entire thing was lit by tiny red lights.

“He’s coming here,” the Drode said. He made a high-pitched keening sound, like he was excited. “Right to this planet.”

“Who?”

The mouth split wide, revealing neon green all the way to the back of the throat. “My master’s name is… Crayak.”

He looked at me expectantly, like he thought my head was about to explode, or that I would fall to my knees in terror, beg him for my life. But when he spoke _this_ name, I felt nothing at all. The fog in my head didn’t quiver, just shrugged lazily along.

“I don’t know that name,” I said.

He sighed and the keening sound dropped an octave. “Of course, the Chee would have put walls around it. _To protect you_. But they can’t protect you from your own nature. That _always_ emerges.”

“Why are we talking?” I asked.

“Always to the point, so refreshing,” the Drode said. Suddenly we were moving very fast above the Death Star, gravitating toward a series of oblong blocks on the horizon. “I came to show you something my master has prepared for you — a present of sorts. A testament to _who you really are._ ”

He tipped his head, that sneer rolling into a grin.

“It’s closer than you would think,” he snickered.

In front of us, the oblong blocks split into rows and rows of barrack-style buildings, each one maybe a mile long, several stories high. We moved quickly between them; left, right, straight ahead. A wide white door, like the ones in the facility where the Animorphs were testing me, slid open silently. We glided through and travelled down a maze of featureless white corridors, left, right, right, left — I quickly lost track amid the twists and turns.

“It isn’t hard to make a monster,” he said. “With enough time, you can do it without even trying. My master is an expert in it. He knows how to weave flesh, bone and blood into something little more than a sentient knife that stalks and kills.”

We emerged into a larger room that seemed to be subterranean — the walls were made of grimy rock, with the ceiling arching high above us, the floor stretching back into darkness. I could not see the far wall.

“And _this_ monster is as perfect as anything he’s ever made — myself excepted, of course,” the Drode said. “He was _inspired_ in his act of creation, you left him with _so much_ to work with.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

_Show no fear,_ I repeated to myself.

“The tusks of an elephant, the hide of a bear, the teeth of a wolf…” He showed his sharp little teeth again. “You’ll see it, and you’ll _know_ it, even if you don’t remember it. Some part of you — not your brain — _always_ remembers the taste of blood.”

We had been drifting forward through the darkness, and now I saw something emerging from it. I tensed my limbs for a fight, but when I saw the smooth expanse of metal, and began to get a sense of the scope of this thing, I realized it wasn’t an alien.

It was a spaceship, and it had been beaten to hell. The front was torn open, and spiderweb cracks covered every window I could see that hadn’t already been shattered. Written across the side in blocky, handwritten letters, was the word _Rachel_.

From the belly of the ship, a door opened awkwardly. I heard something sniffing inside.

“Humans knew the proper way to contain a minotaur,” the Drode said. “Hide it deep, deep within a labyrinth, so it might never escape.”

The thing in the spaceship growled, and several bones fell from the ship onto the ground.

“And _feed_ it from time to time,” the Drode cackled.

I tried to speak, but I couldn’t. It wasn’t some trickery — the fear I had been holding had crept up from my stomach and crawled into my throat and was gripping my vocal cords with a tight fist. I could _smell_ the monster at the center of this maze. It was some mixture of sweat and blood.

_It smells like a battlefield,_ I thought, before realizing that I couldn’t remember ever being on a battlefield, even though I knew this was exactly right. It was all I could do not to pee my pants. Even more terrifying: I could _hear_ it now, it was testing the walkway leading outside. It was chewing something; I could hear it chewing through bone and sinew, the _ripping_ magnified in my ears.

“Do you see it, Rachel?” he whispered. The Drode was too close to me now, just next to my ear. “It knows you’re here. It’s coming for you. It’s _hungry,_ Rachel. It hasn’t eaten in so, so long…”

I could hear the way its teeth clicked. I could hear it growling, low and terrible: _chit-chit-chitter chit_ , rows of teeth grating amongst themselves, pulling the last bits of muscle from a skeleton…

“But, I get ahead of myself,” the Drode said.

And just like that, I was back in the middle of a sterilized white room. The dudes in hazmat suits were frozen with their fingers on the wires in my arm, next to a robot vacuum-sealed in high-tech Tupperware.

“It was nice to see you again,” the Drode said.

And then he was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> By a hardcore fan, for hardcore fans.
> 
> Next chapter to be released Thursday, Oct. 11, by 9 p.m. EDT.
> 
> Thanks for sticking with me, ya'll.


	9. The Ixcila Decrypted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rachel hurtles toward a terrifying fate.

<This Chee has been suspended since shortly after the Battle of the Blade Ship,> Ax was saying. <That would be… five earth years.>

“They’re everyone’s years,” Marco said, automatically.

The facility shook again, more aggressively this time. The lights even flickered. Everyone looked at the ceiling, and Ax typed something furiously into the computer. No one noticed me sitting there, my jaw slack, the blood gone from my face.

<We have a 23 percent chance of not being able to withstand another impact like that,> Ax said finally.

“Let’s not test it,” Jake said. “Rachel, this won’t take long, and then we can all get out of here.”

I couldn’t speak. I felt like I’d been shaken inside and out, then thrown in the dryer and tumbled around into nothing.

_The minotaur knew where I was, and it was coming for me._

A synthetic voice spoke from the speakers: “Decantation complete.”

“Wait,” I croaked, but Jake wasn’t paying attention. He was fixated on a screen in front of him, squinting at something I couldn’t see. Marco was leaning against the back wall — was he _asleep?_ Tobias was pacing behind Ax, who was typing furiously. “ _Wait.”_

I tried to raise my arm, but found it impossible. When had the hazmat suits attached straps around my wrists? I couldn’t move.

“Guys?” I said. “Tobias? What’s going on?”

“We’re ready,” Jake said. “Ax, hit the —“

The whole room _shook_ now, harder than it had before — I swear to God the floor dropped six inches. Red emergency lights began to flicker madly, back and forth around, me, and an alarm started to blare in the distance.

“NOW AX!” Jake yelled.

“ _No!”_ I cried out. “Stop! Please!”

The front of the murky cylinder slid into the floor, and a horrible smell of rot hit my nose and made me gag. The thing inside — was that a Chee? — slumped forward, a mess of mechanical limbs and an oddly stretched face dangling limply, inches away. Then I saw it twitch — the mouth was moving, and the eyes were focusing. They lifted, and when they met mine, I saw they were a vivid green. On connection, I saw her face _flicker_ somehow, and for a second, the face of a beautiful woman came into view. But her eyes rolled back, she groaned. She slumped forward, barely held up by the tube.

“ _DO IT!”_ Jake was yelling over the alarms. “ _MAKE CONTACT!”_

The hazmat suits were shoving me forward in the chair — every time the room shook I moved a little closer. I was screaming now, loudly and angrily, but they had tied my arms and legs — not tight enough, and I was pretty sure I could get out of this — but not before they would get me close enough to this battered, broken robot. One of them was lifting her shattered arm, a mechanical arm, a human arm, an extended finger, the broken prong of an electrical cord —

And I could _hear her_.

“ _No,”_ the Chee begged. “ _No.”_

They lifted her arm and they pushed me forward. Alarms screamed in my ears and the room shook and roiled, but we drew closer and closer, until the tip of her finger touched the top of my forehead.

And then my mind fell apart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For hardcore fans, by a hardcore fan.
> 
> Next chapter to be released Saturday, Oct. 13 at 9 p.m. EDT.
> 
> Once again, thanks for following along.


	10. The One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything goes horribly, terribly wrong.

You remember that scene at the end of _2001: A Space Odyssey?_ The ten minutes of flashing, psychedelic craziness accompanied by wild music interjected with the frozen, screaming astronaut’s face while he deals with some existential horror crisis pounding through his mind?

Don’t remember it? Well _I did_ , of all the awful things to remember, that scene popped into my head as the hazmat suits jammed the Chee lady’s finger against my head and scrambled my brains into a blender. It had been a couple months after the construction site, and Melissa Chapman and I were in a theater with a couple of boys whose names I doubt I would have recalled even if my mind wasn’t metaphorical banana mush, and it was one of their dumb ideas to see this movie. And I remembered thinking, as Melissa and her boy made out a few seats away and the yellow and red and blue patterns spread across the screen, that this movie was about as wrong as it could be when it came to first contact with an alien race. They wouldn’t be passive, and they wouldn’t be interested in helping us along — they would exploit us, poison us, harvest us, take our bodies and resources and use them in their greedy pursuits of power.

I saw my hands extend into hooked talons, felt the tusks of an elephant erupt from between my gums. My eyes exploded into shards and the insane hive mind of an ant gripped me again. I was living through the whole Yeerk war all over again, but on fast forward, with pieces moving so fast I couldn’t discern one from the next.

There I was, on a dressing room floor, an alligator exploding out of my back. I was miles underwater, fighting with a giant squid with tentacles for arms. I was emerging into the sunlight as a white rat yelling <NOW! NOW!> in thought-speak.

I was on the bridge of the Blade Ship, lifting grizzly claws above my head, on which writhed a dying cobra —

The image slowed down, I _felt_ it recede. The snake shuddered and cried out in pain, trying still to lash out at me, but moved slower and slower, until I could see its fangs glistening, so close…

<Further,> I heard Ax say. Except it wasn’t Ax. I could remember Ax’s voice. This was like Ax’s voice, but was distorted with some thick syrupy sound. How didn’t I notice it before? <He only came when they were human.>

I tasted the cobra when I bit down, but for only a second, and then I threw the snake away. I was dying fast now, blood rumbling from a hundred wounds, the venom speeding through my veins. I was already dead, I knew that then, I had accepted it, I had known it would happen as soon as Jake looked at me, he barely needed to explain it. He and I both saw the lines in the sand, one after another. Over the years we had seen how they had widened and filled with more and more blood. I had seen those lines, and I had crossed them willingly and enthusiastically long after everyone else had stopped. That last time was no different. Jake used me to kill Tom, and I had risen to the occasion. Those memories were painfully, achingly clear.

And with Tom dead, my guts hanging out of my stomach and surrounded by enemies in morph, I became a teenage girl one last time. That’s where I was when they stood around me, defenseless, proud, ready to meet my —

_Flicker_.

Oh. No.

_I had forgotten…_

The Chee woman screamed in front of me, and she pulled back against the hazmat suits with such force that she tore the fabric. What emerged from beneath it was not human but a viscous black ooze that shifted and changed.

<DO NOT TOUCH HER! WE’RE CLOSE!> screamed the thing that was not Ax.

<DON’T DO THIS!> Tobias — he must have become a bird again. <You’ll kill her! You’ll kill her!>

I saw him — he was coming toward me, talons reaching for the Chee’s arm — and then the hazmat suit _shifted_ somehow, a whiplike tentacle sprang from beneath the mask and curled around his wings. I heard Tobias scream my name as the monster enveloped him.

Ax looked at me, and as he did, I saw his face change, not like morphing, but like something was just under the skin, trying to emerge. The lower half of his mouth split, revealing red-rimmed teeth.

“Finish it,” he said.

The other hazmat grabbed the arm of the Chee and pressed it back against my head, and there he was, in my memory, as clear as anything I had ever seen: a bird-like creature, barely bigger than Tobias, who had once carried giant crystals across the skies of this very planet.

“Yes,” the Ax-thing said. “All of it, now!”

He began to morph — they all were morphing now, and as they did, they seemed to flow together into a Jake/Marco/Tobias Ax mass, arms and legs jumbling together, faces turning a charcoal grey before fading out, and then I could only see those glowing red teeth.

Then the pictures spun faster inside my head, until I couldn’t follow them, and the pressure inside of my skull became more intense. I was screaming, I was begging them to stop, I was lost in the blur and the fury and the terror as I relived the minutes of my first life, replayed as the moments of my last.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For hardcore fans, by a hardcore fan.
> 
> Next chapter to be released Monday, Oct. 15 at 9 p.m. EDT.
> 
> Thanks for sticking with me. I know there are a lot of unanswered questions, but I promise that i've thought this through!


	11. The Minotaur

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rachel is hunted.

I don’t know how long my brain in a blender lasted, but when it finally stopped, I was alone.

The Chee was still in the decantation pod, but she wasn’t moving. Her robotic body was splayed out amid a mess of wires and tubes, a metal finger inches from my forehead. I drew my head back instinctively; her touch had caused an explosion in my mind, and I wanted to be as far away from her as I could.

Even in my shaky, barely-able-to-think state, it wasn’t hard to remove the restraints placed on me. I had nearly broken out of them to begin with. It was hard to stand, harder to walk, although no one was here to stop me. 

The room where the Animorphs had stood was dark now. Brackish goo was slathered on the window facing me, in long, gritty streaks. I watched it for a long time, but I saw no movement.

The rest of the room around me had been wrecked. Parts of the ceiling had fallen in, and one of the corners had caved in completely. The whole place was bathed in the reddish glow of emergency lights, flickering slowly.

_Why had they left me alone?_ I’d been in that chair for who knows how long, unconscious and unprotected.

“They got what they wanted,” I whispered to myself, closing my eyes. _But what had they wanted?_

They had shown me my death — or something very close to it. But they had slowed parts of it, had focused on something…

The room shook, less violently than before, but no less ominously. It broke my concentration and brought me back into the moment.

I had to get out of here.

*

The door was stuck shut; I braced my shoulder under it and pushed with everything I had. It finally shuddered and gave, sliding into some dark compartment. I leaned against the wall and peered down into the dark corridor. It was empty, only colored by the red lights, which flickered more smoothly. Far off, I could hear an alarm blaring.

I walked down the hallway, keeping myself close to the wall. I was exposed here, without protection. What was worse, the corridor curved gently, reducing my visibility.

Ten feet down the hallway, I found a door, unlocked. I opened it, and I found myself inside the adjoining room where the Animorphs had stood earlier. The front of it was completely coated in that brackish slime; it was beginning to smell.

Set back a bit was the glowing touch screen Ax had been manipulating. On it, I saw the the faces of my friends. Their eyes were closed, and they were shaded a light blue. The word **RECANTED** blinked over their cheeks. Next to them, I saw the face of the Chee woman; she looked different, with a red tint flashing softly.

I was trying to wrap my head around all of it when I heard something moving in the hallway outside.

I froze. It wasn’t the sound of footsteps, not exactly. It was a _clicking_ sound, but it had the frequency of footsteps. _Click, click, click._

I thought, insanely, of the velociraptors in _Jurassic Park_ , walking through the kitchen, hunting the two kids. _Now it’s time for a closeup of a reptilian claw: click, click, click._

I went to the door and looked down the corridor. I saw nothing at first; the same empty hallway, those flickering lights, the alarms in the distance; that _click, click, click_ -ing. Seeing nothing, I stepped outside and took a few steps forward.

Around the bend, I saw a monster.

A long, silvery snout scanned along the floor. Lips curled back, revealing mottled, slimy teeth. It came closer — _was the snout jointed?_ — and I saw that it was attached to an impossibly huge head, flat with tufted ears with small, beady eyes. Two slender bones curled out from its lips. It stood low to the ground on four legs that ended in curved hooks, not far off from the velociraptors I had just been picturing.

My stomach filled with cold knots of dread and I began to breathe faster. Something was _familiar_ about this creature. The head was in the shape of a grizzly bear. The snout elongated and contracted, and though it looked nothing like one, they were the moves of an elephants trunk. And those weren’t claws, I realized — they were the talons of an eagle.

_The tusks of an elephant, the hide of a bear, the teeth of a wolf…_ I heard the Drode snickering in my mind. 

So this was the Minotaur.

*

It looked up and saw me, standing there like an idiot, my mouth hanging open. I stared at it, and it stared right back, like it couldn’t believe I would just let it eat me.

And then it _hissed_ somehow, a low, scary-as-hell growl of a whole lot of air sliding up between teeth. It was the sound of a predator, ramping up for a quick meal.

I took a step backward, but I stumbled over my own feet, barely catching myself. I bit down on my tongue and the metal taste of blood filled my mouth.

Its eyes lit up. It moved closer, braver now. It’s massive body was coated in some matted gray fur. It knew that I was easy prey, and it was in no rush.

I turned around and bolted back the way I had come, into the room where they had conducted their faux tests on me. I heard the Minotaur roar — a horrifying, guttural sound that almost sounded like a combination of bear and eagle. I was screaming too, but I didn’t even realize it until I was trying to close the door behind me.

I almost had it closed when a talon snaked around the doorframe and slashed across my shoulder.

I fell backward, pain shooting down my arm. If I had fallen, it probably would have been the end of me, but I caught myself and darted into the closest shelter I could find — the glass tube of the dead Chee. 

I slammed my uninjured shoulder into her, moving like the terrified maniac I was, and I shoved her fully out of it. Her body was heavy, and all I really did was tip the center of gravity so she fell, lopsided, against the floor. 

I glanced back the way I had come — the Minotaur was forcing its body inside the room, its shoulders bulging and retracting. The lids above its eyes peeled back to reveal the orbs of an owl, fixated and determined to kill me.

I broke its gaze and looked around, looking for something — anything. There was a handle above me, so I reached up and pulled. The door began to slide down slowly — _so slowly._

The Minotaur _screeched_ in rage, and then it was inside the room, and it was barreling toward me. I leaned against the back of the pod, closed my eyes and screwed my face up as I screamed. My resurrection had been brief and now I was about to die, in a way somehow _worse_ than the first time.

*

Something clicked, and suddenly I couldn’t hear the Minotaur anymore.

I opened my eyes.

It was pressed against the glass, and it was _mad_. It clawed at the tube, and was fogging up the glass.

A computer voice intoned calmly: “Decantation complete. Remnants will now be discarded.”

“Wha —?” I started to say, but then the tube — and me! — was dropping very quickly into the floor, leaving behind a snarling, furious monster.

I picked up speed, rocketing downward faster than I could fall; I was mashed up against the roof, thrust to the left, then hurtled to the right. I didn’t have time to brace myself, so I bounced like a rag doll when it shifted, and every time it knocked the wind out of me.

And then it got very, very dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For hardcore fans, by a hardcore fan.
> 
> Thanks for all your comments — I was hoping you'd enjoy the twist, and I'm super pumped to start off a darker part of this tale with this chapter. Rachel is truly alone, and survival won't be easy.
> 
> Next chapter to be released Wednesday, Oct. 17, 9 p.m. EDT.


	12. Discarded

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rachel has escaped — but to where?

When I came to, hot blood was running down my arms. My shoulder throbbed angrily, and white lights swam across my vision before settling into nothing.

I was still in the tube. I could tell because of the cold metal on my forehead. I pulled my head back, and felt something _slurp_ as it came unstuck.

I tried to move my arm and felt a shooting pain along my chest. I took a deep breath, but could only get so far before stars darted in front of my eyes again.

Wherever I was was hot. And we’re not talking a-little-too-much-sun-at-the-beach hot, we’re talking hey-the-mall-needs-to-close-because-the-AC-died-and-people-are-literally-fainting-in-the-food-court hot. It was hard to breathe, and not just because of my probably broken rib.

Shakily, I stepped outside of the pod. Something crunched underneath my feet. The air tasted stale, and it was completely dark. Was I underground?

“Hey,” I said. 

_hey, hey, hey…_

An echo, raspy and reverberating. It sounded like it went on forever.

Suddenly, my heart began to pound. I was trapped here. I was going to die, knowing nothing about why I had been brought back to life, or what had become of my friends.

I was panicking, my breathing coming in shorter bursts now.

“Not now, Rachel,” I snapped at myself. “Keep it together. You won’t let this kill you, even if it kills you.”

e _ven if it kills you…_

Now that it had been a few minutes and my eyes had adjusted to the darkness, I realized I wasn’t entirely blind. I could make out shadows, almost imperceptible against the blackness. But that meant — it had to mean — that there was a source of light somewhere, and a source of light might mean a way out.

I took a step forward, ignoring the stabbing pain, I took a step forward. More crunching as my feet adjusted.

Yes — it was definitely brighter up ahead. I took a tentative, blind step, then another, then another. I was starting to feel better about it until I smacked my foot against some rock. I cursed, and my profanity rattled around me down the cave.

_It was so hot in here._ And far behind me, I heard something rumble. What was it they had said? This planet had intense amounts of volcanic activity, something like that. That must have been a truth, with the way everything rocked and rolled every 20 minutes or so.

Well. The last place I wanted to be was underground if the whole place was about to come crashing down on me.

I tried not to think about that as, slowly, the outlines of the cave came into focus. It was definitely a cavern — and a big one, at that, with a ceiling about 20 feet above me. And whereas the walls and floor around me were jagged, natural rock, it was clear that the ceiling was artificial, and smooth except for round pocks every dozen yards or so. I must have come through one of those.

But if that was true, then that meant…

More crunching, louder, under my feet, and if I had had another second to follow my train of thought, I wouldn’t have looked down, but I did: a mottled skull crumbled to dust under my feet.

“ _Eeeeee_!” 

My shriek bounced off the walls as I screamed, echoed back and wrapped me in its awful sound. I clamped my eyes shut, because the darkness was better.

_Come on, Rachel. You’ve seen a lot worse than this._

Yeah, that was true. I’d torn off limbs. I had been dismembered. This was just a little piece of bone, dead a long time.

I needed to calm down and get out of there.

I could see more now, and I moved faster, kicking through piles of debris. There were a _lot_ of remains down here, and not all of them were decades old; I saw a tall creature with greenish skin splayed out, blades wrapping out from it’s limbs.

_Hork Bajir_ came the memory from my mind. _Yeerk shock trooper. They cut me up a few times. But they’re not that bad, really._

This guy wasn’t about to do any cutting; he’d been there a while and smelled awful, his head contorted, like he was in pain. There was enough light now that I could see large scars along the side of his neck, five perfectly round holes wrapping their way beneath his chin. It was pretty gross, in all honesty, so I tried not to look too long.

Further ahead: a Taxxon, only recognizable because of the hundreds of little appendages. It was… pretty torn up. I moved past it quickly.

And then there was a human.

It was a man. He was leaning back against the cavern wall, and he didn’t look scared. There was a lot of blood on what looked like some kind of a jumpsuit, and there was just enough light that I could read the word SANTORELLI written on his name tag. He had the same five scars along the left side of his neck.

The sight of him disturbed me. He was like me. Like him, I had been discarded — me, because they’d gotten what they’d wanted out of my head. Him, because — well, I didn’t know. But we’d all wound up in this same hot, dark place, and he had died.

If I didn’t get out of here right now, so would I.

*

It was like a piece of my mind went blank, replaced with some kind of reptilian instinct that had only one prerogative: MOVE. I pushed toward the light, moving faster until I was sprinting. I was in full-on panic mode, barely able to breathe. I needed out I NEEDED TO GET OUT

Then — _light_!

I burst outside, and I almost immediately collapsed onto the ground. It was only then that I realized tears were streaming down my face, and I was choking in gulps of air to the point of hyperventilating.

But I’d made it out — I was outside.

I stood up after a minute, instructing my mind that I wanted it to get rid of what it had just seen, to bury it up and lock it in the fog still filling most of my brain. Of course it refused. Santorelli’s face, so relaxed, bubbled up, burst, came back.

I focused on the world around me and shut him out.

I was standing in at the edge of a lush, green jungle. The trees were enormous, the canopy thick. It was almost entirely silent, besides the dripping of water and wind through leaves. I heard no animal sounds at all. Peeking up at the sky between the leaves, I realized I was lucky to have emerged from the cave when I did; whatever sun lit this world seemed to be about to set. The air had an acrid smell to it. Turning around, I saw the crest of a mountain rising slowly. Longs cuts across it were blackened and smoking.

I stepped uncertainly toward the jungle. I was in some sort of clearing, and the closer I looked at it, the less natural it appeared to be. Another step, and one of my feet landed on something hard.

Scraping with my toes, I saw a darkened, metallic surface beneath me. Examining it closer, I realized that it stretched forward, deeper into the jungle, and wherever it went, trees didn’t grow — a road?

I tried to follow it, but the light had already been fading, and the jungle grew darker with every step. Soon I was squinting, barely able to see in front of my face. I tried to move faster, and was nearly at a run before tripping and falling over my own feet, sending myself crashing into the ground, causing shooting pain through my ribs and a new gash on my leg.

I tried to stand, failed and landed back right on my butt. I couldn’t see hardly anything any more; if this planet had a moon, it wasn’t out. At least the jungle was silent, which probably meant that it was safe. Probably.

But I didn’t _want_ to be here. I wanted to be somewhere warm and safe. I wanted to be with my mom. I wanted to know who my enemy was and I wanted to know how to kill them.

My frustration rose up from my stomach and filled my throat.

“I’m helpless,” I said through gritted teeth, to the jungle, and I hated the sound of weakness in my voice. “There is nothing I can do. There is nowhere I can go. I’m just going to die here.”

And then, like a pathetic wimp, I started to cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For hardcore fans, by a hardcore fan
> 
> Next chapter to be released Friday, Oct. 19 at 9 p.m.


	13. The Path

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rachel finds light in the darkness.

The sun had set entirely before the thing happened.

I noticed it immediately; suddenly, the jungle wasn’t silent anymore. It started as a series of low whines, almost like an engine turning over. _whrrr, whrrr, whrrr._ The sounds grew louder, and louder — they were pounding into my ears, so I plugged them, closed my eyes and began to yell to drown it out.

Then it was only me screaming.

I opened my eyes. The jungle was as silent as before, but now it was lit up brilliantly by soft, glowing lights affixed to the trees. They were placed in a pattern, along the side of the strip of metal I walked on now, leading deeper into the jungle — it _was_ a road!

I got to my feet, ignoring the pain in my butt and my back, peering deeper down the winding road. Five or six lights away, I could see something else illuminated — a structure with a flat surface, on which a handful of symbols glowed faintly.

I approached it warily. There were maybe thirty runes on it, they had been scraped deeply into the stone. They were incredibly detailed, although most of the them looked like nothing I had ever seen: non-humanoid faces, things that might have been dwellings, the pocked surface of a moon —

I paused.

At the very bottom of the post was a glyph of a red-tailed hawk.

“Tobias…” I breathed. Had he been here? Was this some kind of message… from him?

I dared to hope for just a second before shaking myself. I had no idea what had happened to Tobias. At worst, he was dead. At best, he was somewhere on Earth, living his life as a hawk or a human, with his mother, unaware that I was alive.

_I’m not human anymore._

A memory floated up. It was as clear as if it had just happened, wrapped in tendrils of facts. They bloomed in with context. The details spread like dye in water.

*

It was very early in the morning, 2 a.m., maybe later. Tobias only ever came in the middle of the night, long after even my mother, who often stayed up late working on legal briefs, had gone to bed. In the beginning of the war, he would peck at the window and call softly to me in thought-speak, if I had fallen asleep. In those days, he was just a bird, and I don’t think either of us knew what to do with the other. We just knew, even then, that we wanted to be close. 

Later on, after he regained his human form, he didn’t need to wake me up. I never really slept after that first year.

We had our routine. He would flap awkwardly through the window, and then he would morph into human. I had clothes he could wear, things I got at the mall. I loved buying clothes for him — it was the only time I ever bought clothes for a boy. I’d go through the racks in the Gap, running my fingers on the fabric, imagining how it would look on him, how it would accentuate the color of his eyes. Sometimes I even bought something cute to match against it (unbelievably dumb, because Tobias and I almost never went out in public together). I did it because it felt like something normal, and for a while, that was enough for me.

He would get dressed while I looked away, and then we would talk, for a little bit. Never very long. Chit chat. _How’s school going? How’s the meadow?_

That never lasted very long. Tobias and I didn’t even share a class when we went to the same school, and now we shared a secret war that we never talked about. We didn’t even talk about the other Animorphs, not ever. Later on, there wasn’t even small talk. I would just reach out and touch his human arm, and pull him into the bed next to me.

We never did anything. We never even made out, and if he’d wanted to go further, he never indicated it. We just held each other, face to face, intertwined. Sometimes his face in my shoulder, sometimes mine in his chest. We would spend an hour like that, an hour and a half if we were coming off a bad mission. Neither of us ever fell asleep, because we knew what Tobias would lose if we did.

After a while, deep down, Tobias didn’t want to be human again. I never understood why, not really. But I also knew that forfeiting his ability to morph came with great personal risk to both him, myself, and possibly the fate of the planet. Him becoming human again for my sake was never an option.

But sometimes… sometimes, I did think about afterward. I wondered what would happen if we won. If all the battles and all the blood went away. If all our decisions turned out to be for the best.

*

We only spoke once while we lay in bed together. This was the memory that crept up now. It was wrapped up in years of late nights, silent holding, feeling his chest rising and falling against mine, smelling him. He always smelled so clean, like he’d just stepped out of the shower, some odd, wonderful consequence of morphing.

A mission was coming up. I couldn’t remember which one, now. It was a big one, so it must have been close to the end. And something about it was rattling him.

He whispered, softly. The sounds he made always a little malformed because he hardly ever spoke them outside of his head: _Do you think we’ll make it?_

_Yeah._ But that wasn’t enough for me. _We’re going to make them pay. We’re going to wipe them on our feet —_

He pressed his face against mine. _I don’t mean that. What if they were all gone? Right now? All of them? What if it was just… over?_

_They’d still be out there. We could —_

< _I’ll never return to my human form, Rachel. Not really. >_

I drew my head back. My face was still only an inch from his, but that space loomed as a chasm between us. In these quiet, midnight hours, we had always focused on each other, on our touch, the movements of our breath. We had never pulled away before we had to, never before the morning light.

Tobias had never spoken to me in thought-speak, from his human form. I didn’t even know it was possible, although it made sense, according to the rules of morphing. I guess he had just never done it with me, because he knew how much it would hurt.

< _I love you. I know that. And I know that I’ve changed. I can’t change back. >_

_*_

In the present, something clicked into place. I realized that, at some point during the war, having nothing to fight for scared me more than death. I couldn’t imagine what my life would look like after the war. I had needed something from it. I had needed something to chase.

I had needed something to kill.

*

Until the moment he whispered into my mind, Tobias had offered me something else. It barely existed, in the back of my mind: a future as fragile as a soap bubble.  


He was a floppy-haired twenty-something in a studio apartment in the city, picking up empty takeout containers. He was at the altar of my wedding, smiling shyly as my dad led me down the aisle. He was watering the lawn of my suburban house with attached garage, a picket fence, two cars, a dog, a kid.

And it was only then, in that moment, that I finally understood that I had lost a future like that. It was gone. What’s more: it couldn’t ever have existed. The war led me to my fantasy, and now it annihilated it.

*

_< I’ve changed,> _he repeated. < _I’m not human anymore. >_

_Neither am I,_ I whispered. 

He started to say something else in my mind, but I was overwhelmed. I pulled him closer, bit down softly on his neck and wrapped my arms as tight around him I could. And I whispered, _stop, stop, stop_ under my breath, until he was quiet.

*

All of that came back to me as I stood before the symbol of the hawk. The memories came smoothly, perfectly, filled with enough information that I could grasp them without struggling.

Tenderly, I reached my hand forward, touching the icon.

It glowed a soft blue and began to thrum. The other icons became a dark grey color, indistinguishable against the shadows. Something began to whistle in the trees, and I tilted my head to follow it.

There, ten yards away, was another softly glowing hawk icon. Ten yards beyond that, another one, and then another, barely visible in the darkness of the forest.

They were marking a path.

They were showing me a way out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For hardcore fans, by a hardcore fan.
> 
> Next chapter to be released Sunday, Oct. 21, 9 p.m. EDT.


	14. The Glyph

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rachel sees flickers, real and remembered.

Something was happening in the sky.

At first, I thought it was just the occasional shooting star. Ket had no moon, and when I walked through the dark patches between the lights, it was like I could see every star in the galaxy. It was a magnificent view, and the first time I looked up, I just stood there gaping at it.

That’s when I saw the flickers.

They were subtle, almost like smears across the sky. But they lasted just a little too long to be space debris entering an atmosphere — the light faded out too slowly. The sight brought back a lovely memory from when my parents’ took my sisters and I out of our hometown to see the Perseids Meteor Shower, and we sat in the back of my dad’s pickup truck with blankets and plastic chairs and ate Lunchables, Gushers and Pringles. It was long before the divorce, even before the fighting got bad. The thought of it washed over me as I gazed at the sky, and it filled me with peace.

_Not now, Rachel_ , I thought to myself. That memory was nice, but it wasn’t going to help me find a way out of this place. “Get it together,” I said, almost snarling the words.

The image of my little sisters and me, cooking s’mores over a little fire in the desert, shimmered and vanished. The flickers in the sky were nothing like the streaks we had watched then — they were the wrong colors, too — leaving distinctive red and yellow trails until they faded out. Something was causing them, but I couldn’t see it against the darkness. There were a lot of them too — I counted twenty of them over a couple minutes before I stopped. The other thing was, they stretched across a huge swath of sky. _What could cause that?_

I studied the flashes as I followed the symbols of the red-tailed hawk, moving at a fairly brisk clip. The signs appeared to be changing too, so subtly I didn’t notice it until a few signs in. The hawk symbol grew slightly larger on each sign and glowed a little brighter, whereas the other symbols, darkened, were growing smaller and redistributing around it. The pattern seemed to indicate that, whatever the red-tailed hawk represented, I was getting closer to it.

Unsettlingly, as the glyph expanded in size, I could see more clearly that it wasn’t quite a red-tailed hawk. It was _close_ to it, sure — the shape of the head was distinctive, even the feather pattern and the distribution of the eyes was in perfect proportion with what I would expect to see. But the legs were wrong — they were slightly too long, and the beak was too wide and the head was just a little too large. At first, I thought maybe it was a hawk in caricature, certain features exaggerated, but as the symbols grew larger, I realized that couldn’t be correct.

Yet this revelation didn’t unsettle me, because the creature still seemed familiar somehow. Why did I know the shape of it? Why did it ring true in my mind?

I studied the image and sent it into the fog in my mind.

Pain shot through my head as the fog responded explosively. I grabbed the signpost for support. There was the Chee woman again, screaming, her finger pressed against my forehead as she dredged my hidden memories. The Animorphs-not-Animorphs had been using her. They had needed her to seek out something specific, had zeroed in on a particular moment, at the very end of my life. I had only had a second to glimpse it before they tore into it, the pain that followed obliterating everything else I might have seen.

This symbol brought me back to the instant my mind detached, but the pain was not so bad now that I couldn’t follow the thread of it. I was on the bridge of the Blade Ship, surrounded by the carnage I created when I tore through it. And it was time, time for me to die, when time stopped.

Oh.

*

The Ellimist had appeared to me, for reasons I didn’t know. Had he felt guilt at his role in manipulating the universe so that we were drawn into this war? We had slowly realized that, in his cosmic game, the Animorphs and myself didn’t really matter. We were some means to an end that he had never revealed to us. It had infuriated me. He had the ability to end all of it in an instant, with his control over the curling of space and time, but he refused to use it. And he could have saved me then, but his rules prevented it.

In the instant before my death, he had tried to show me _why_ all this had to happen, _why_ I had to die, and _why_ my sacrifice mattered. He couldn’t show me the endof it — I don’t think he ever had the ability to see the future. Maybe he could see potential timelines, but not the actual, real thing. He didn’t know how it would turn out, so in some sort of consolation prize to assuage his complicity, he showed me how it had begun.

It had begun on Ket.

*

“Ketran,” I said to the symbol of the bird-not-a-bird. “You’re a Ketran, aren’t you?”

Of course it didn’t respond, only shimmered with that blue glow. I let the memories of Ket, gifted via Ellimist, run through my head. The Ellimist’s name had been _Toomin_ — his game name had been _Ellimist_. He had picked it because it sounded light and breezy — the most consequential moniker in the universe, picked by some kid alien having a good day.

He showed me the games the Ketrans had played, the ones that brought about the end of their world. I saw the horizons of Ket. I felt the wind under Toomin’s wings as he beat them, along with his people, as they propelled their huge crystals through the sky.

The Ket that I wandered now did not seem to match up with Toomin’s memories, but then again, he had never been to the surface of Ket. He had described it as a volcanic wasteland, interspersed with acid seas and minor plant life; this jungle was lush and thriving, and the air tasted fine and breathable.

How long had it been since those early memories, I wondered? How long since the Ketrans had flown through the skies? Thousands of millennia? Hundreds? How much had the surface of Ket changed since its people had been exterminated?

I stared at the Ketran symbol which now filled several rows and columns.

“And who made you?” I said to it. “If all the Ketrans were dead… where did you come from?”

And then, suddenly, I came to the end of the path, and I knew where the sign had been leading me. The jungle opened into an enormous clearing, spreading out around for a mile or more. At the center of it was a ruin of gargantuan scale, a misshapen structure, pyramidal, but the angles were all wrong for constructing it here. This had not been built at this site — _it had fallen from the sky._

Through the lens of Toomin’s memories, I knew exactly where I had arrived.

I was at the Equatorial High Crystal, the home of the Ellimist.


	15. Outside

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> To get inside the crystal, Rachel must look within herself.

I couldn’t see an easy way to get inside.

The only entrance, as far as I could tell, was fifty feet up, some sort of square opening, recessed into darkness. There were no stairs, no ladders, no kind of access.

I was pretty sure it was a good idea to go in. My memories of Ket weren’t mine, and they were possibly millions of years old, but the crystals had been capable of radio transmission at some point, and maybe I could, I don’t know, “ET Phone Home” or something.

It was the best — and only — plan I had.

I tried to explore around the edges of the sheer walls, but the lights quickly petered out, and I definitely didn’t want to get lost in the jungle. So I stood there, staring up at that doorway like an idiot, wracking my brain for ideas.

The Equatorial High Crystal lay where it had fallen, oblong and awkward. This side would have faced the planet’s surface for the entirety of the Ketran race’s aerial existence, and now it had a clear view of the sky. If the Ketrans inside hadn’t been killed on impact, they likely would have been banged up.

_Could_ the Ketrans still be around? If they were… would they be willing to help me?

But the whole place was lifeless and silent. Still, the Ketrans _had_ to have been here, what else could have made the markers I had followed?

“Okay, Rachel. Think,” I mumbled. “If I was an advanced alien bird, how would I get into my house?”

_Fly, idiot_ , my sarcastic inner monologue responded, my eyes flickering to the window above.

Sure, okay, but why the lighted path, the ground-level signposts? There _was_ a door here, I just wasn’t seeing it.

I went back to the signpost, studying the symbols. It was time to remember everything I could possibly remember about Ket.

Ketran society had quite literally revolved around these crystals, each of which required a certain number of its inhabitants in order to remain aloft. Millions of Ketrans performed regular flying duties at different stations around the crystal, beating their wings for a period of time, keeping the entire thing up in the sky.

When the Ketrans had been massacred by the Capasins, there had simply not been enough of them to generate loft, and the Crystals had hurtled to the surface of the planet, where the Ellimist had believed they died terrible deaths.

But apparently not, if a ruin was still hanging around.

“So the Ketrans crash landed, and they were like: ‘ _Whoah, we’re alive_ ,’” I said. “And they’re probably hurt, and they’re scared, and they know there’s no way they can lift up this thing again any time soon.”

_What would they do?_

“They would settle in for the long haul,” I said, the wheels turning slowly. “They would start exploring the jungle, maybe they would try to find other crystals that might have crashed. They would have to change…”

_Change…_

If the Ketrans had really lived here for millions of years, no longer a species dependent on flight, they would have had to change, the same way that every species did with time and environmental stressors: by natural selection. There would have been no reason for them to fly any more, they would have grown stronger legs, would have ventured out into the jungle…

“That explains the paths, but it doesn’t tell me how to open the door,” I muttered. I turned around and marched back to the wall, butting right up into the jungle. I couldn’t see anything different, but there _had_ to be something, they wouldn’t have built a path to a featureless wall.

_What if they’d wanted to keep someone out?_

“Yeah,” I said. “Like a security system.” The Ketran race was a horrifying personification of the phrase _Loose lips sink ships._ What effect would that kind of collective trauma produce on an entire people? An open, aerial species transformed into a race of suspicious ground dwellers.

What form would the lock take? I saw nothing that looked like a keyhole.

“They’d want it to be easy to use, but something only they would know…” It would be deeply personal, probably independent of any device using radio waves.

An idea crept through my head. I blinked.

I was remembering a day in first grade, one of those times where you get a substitute teacher who puts on a movie, any movie. We’d been doing some kind of unit on fables, and he had put on a cartoon version of _Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves._

I looked at the crystal in front me, rolled my eyes.

“I can’t believe I’m about to do this,” I muttered, then took a deep breath and said: “ _Open sesame!”_

The crystal did nothing, and I felt dumb.

_Not dumb,_ I thought. _You’re just not there yet. Come on Rachel. What did the Ellimist say?_

I dove deeper into his memories. We were flying through the sky, we were inside one of those virtual reality games that had dealt the Ketran race such a terrible blow. Toomin was laughing with his friends, they were all arriving home after a day of riding the thermals, he was going into heart of it…

_…and they were all speaking a different language!_

Of course! I hadn’t realized it when the Ellimist had showed me, because I was right there with him in the memory, and one doesn’t think about the words they use when they are fluent in them. But with a little tweaking, I could view this memory objectively, I could _hear_ his intonations, the strange squawking, and I could intuit what they meant.

It took me a few minutes for the word to materialize in my mind, but I guess a few minutes isn’t bad, considering the how far it had to travel to reach my lips.

I made a chirping sound from deep in my throat, a warble that twisted along the inside of my mouth. It sounded melodic, somehow. It slid out smoothly, and I couldn’t help but feel that I was giving a voice to a ghost.

“ _Open,”_ I said.

In front of me, the crystal parted, revealing a passageway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> By a hardcore fan, for hardcore fans.
> 
> Many thanks for those coming along the ride with me — I'm so pumped to see how ya'll take the next series of chapters.
> 
> Thanks for the comments — I've been reading and listening!
> 
> Next chapter to be released Thursday, Oct. 25, 9 p.m. EDT.


	16. Sculpture

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rachel discovers something beautiful.

The crystal was lit from within, but I saw no lamps. The stone itself seemed to be responding to me as I walked, turning a deep blue near my ankles and a lighter shade of it near my face. The air felt thicker in here; it almost felt like I was walking through an ocean.

The passageway was wide and quite tall. It induced no claustrophobia, and it gently ascended at an even level. The walls were covered in beautiful symbols of increasing complexity. I spent a few minutes studying them, feeding them into the shoebox in my mind that I had labelled _Ellimist’s Ket Memories._ The images came back without any flickers of recognition. This frustrated me, until I realized that they were right-side up, which meant that they had been etched long after the fall of the Ketrans. That made sense — this tunnel had clearly been built to connect to the outside, exactly where I had entered it. The Ellimist would have never seen any of these.

The glyphs on the walls were magnificent — they looked like something out of an ancient Egyptian pyramid. They showed elaborate, flowering vines woven around tall trees, and walking among them were tall creatures I did not recognize. They walked on four powerful legs, and had some kind of spikes on their back and arms. The spikes were unlike Hork Bajir; they were somehow softer, more elegant. They were shown darting in and out of the vines, cutting through them, becoming tangled in them.

Before much time passed, I saw a brighter light ahead of me. The passage became wider, and suddenly it opened up.

I had stepped into an enormous atrium, the roof of which must have reached to the top of the crystal, that’s how big it was. It was like I was standing inside a football field, maybe several football fields. It was all open air and entirely unsupported — the crystal must have been incredibly stable. Everything seemed to be lit with those same hues of blue light, only it was much brighter. The air tested fresher; ventilation was happening somehow, too.

The space was not empty. Weaving paths had been cut around the expanse. Between them were large growths of vegetation, some grassier, and some vine-like, creeping up trunks of trees. All of it seemed to ascend gently, and in the center was an enormous and complicated sculpture depicting the creatures I had seen on the walls of the tunnel.

Glowing signposts, like the one that had led me here, were scattered amid the paths and trees. Through force of habit, I touched the symbol of a Ketran, and, as expected, it glowed a deeper blue, and others lit up in front of me.

They were leading me toward the sculpture, and as I got closer to it, I could see that it was rotating slowly. This was incredible in itself — the sculpture was enormous, but the really impressive part was how each individual creature seemed to be moving on a hidden track. The sculptures shifted within the rotation, their limbs moving almost imperceptibly. It was an eerie, almost unsettling effect, but the blue glow made the whole thing feel very peaceful.

Up close, I could see the creatures better. They had powerful legs, long necks, maybe half the length of a giraffe. The spikes were rounded to hooked points that endlessly moved in deliberate, slashing motions. Sculpted vines continually came together and split apart as the creatures mimed slicing through them.

The whole thing was so intricate, I couldn’t concentrate on anything else. And as I drew closer to it, I saw that it was moving faster, and the blue glow was becoming more intense. The creatures moved with more determination, hidden joints in their necks suddenly all turning to face the sky.

At the top of the chamber, something moved.

I dropped into a half squat, my fingers suddenly balled into fists, staring into the blue inkiness of the ceiling. Had I walked straight into an ambush?

But to my amazement, I saw something spread its wings, take flight, descend — a red-tailed hawk!

_No_ , I thought, as it came more firmly into focus. _But it sure looks an awful lot like one._

It was a Ketran, flying in the sky.

*

I could hardly breathe as it drifted down in long, swooping arcs. I thought, at first, that maybe it simply didn’t see me, but as it drew closer, I realized that it couldn’t see me. This was not a flesh and blood Ketran. This was a part of the sculpture, free-flying, powered by some energy source I couldn’t see. But its eyes were lifeless stone, its wings shifted mechanically. As the Ketran alighted upon the sculpture (the heads of the landlocked creatures following its every move), I heard a soft _whirring_ sound from somewhere in its feathers.

The drone-Ketran peered down at the four-legged, spiked creatures. The four legged creatures looked back.

And then, in the middle of it all, appearing to float in the air: a symbol appeared in delicate calligraphy. It had the shape of a thin, straight line, but at the upper left tip was a small parallel line, and at the bottom right, a longer line. It resembled the letter _L,_ with a little swirl at the very front.

_I knew this symbol._

No, not me — Toomin knew this. It was tucked somewhere inside his memories inside me. The ghost of the Ketran in me responded as the sight of the glyph slipped into it, and responded, in turn, with a sound.

The closest translation in English, as near as I could tell, would have been the word _join_ —  or maybe _unite_ — but there was a lot wrapped up into it, both sadness and joy.

I curled my lips around the sound and spoke it.

The glyph dissolved, seemingly into thin air, and the sculpture began to shift and move again.

The Ketran raised its wings, flew high and then dove into the center of the creatures. They stood on their hind legs, balancing for an instant before falling inward. The entire thing began to glow with a terrific intensity, and I felt the ground shaking from what must have been an enormous amount of mechanical infrastructure moving beneath it.

One of the four-legged creatures emerged. A Ketran was perched on the spikes on its back. The creature stood, and as it did, the Ketran lowered its head onto the head of the now two-legged creature, and, through a delicate series of clicking and clacking, the two statues became one.

I watched with awed wonder. It inspired no memories or thoughts — I had never seen anything like it in either of my lives. More Ketrans were flitting down from the sky, landing on the emerging statues. Light danced, changed; they all became something else. The new beings had Ketran wings, with bodies and arms from the other race.

They were almost angelic, but no artist had ever painted beings with these lines or shapes. They looked fierce, a force to be reckoned with — and strangely beautiful.

“Well, _that_ certainly answers some questions I’ve had!”

My mouth went dry. My body seized, every muscle preparing for an attack.

The Drode had found me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter to be released Saturday, Oct. 27, 9 p.m. EDT.


	17. Crayak Preparing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rachel catches a glimpse of approaching evil.

“I’m _so_ glad I waited to reach out. I was going to have my minotaur stalk and kill you when it got dark, but my curiosity got the best of me when I saw you with that sign. It _reacts_ to you — that is something I did not expect!”

I lowered myself onto my haunches, raising my hands into fists in front of my face. The Drode was only a few feet away from me, watching the sculpture. He looked amused.

“I don’t think any of us knew that any of this was here! So the Ketran race survived, for a while at least. And the other ones — what were they called? …The _Ridenya_! That was them.” He waved his stubby arm dismissively. “They are all so hard to remember. They were one of the first races my master destroyed.” He cackled to himself.

My heart was racing. I was searching for a weapon. My eyes settled on a stick, fallen from one of the trees. It wasn’t much, but it was something.

I took a step toward it.

“Go ahead,” he said, motioning toward the stick. “It won’t help. It’s far too late now. I’m going to kill you.” He tipped his head as an idea ran through it. “That is… unless you’d prefer to join your friends?” He threw his head back and roared with laughter.

My mouth fell open. “Tobias… Jake… _that was really them?!_ ”

“Oh, yes.” He was laughing so hard he could hardly choke out the words. “The ones and the same you knew from Earth! They wandered _far_ from where they should have been. Quite simple, to lure them. It wasn’t even against the rules of the game.”

“What was wrong with them?” I asked. I wrapped my fingers around the tree limb. Maybe I could catch him off guard and crack him over his fat skull.

“Now that they are in service to my master, nothing at all,” he said.

“Jake would never —“

“I control them, now, using an intermediate. An _exceptional_ creature, that thing is, second only to myself as Crayak’s greatest creation.” He sighed happily. “In a way, I’m wrapped around the gray bits of their brains. I make them speak for me. The effect isn’t unlike what the Yeerks did with their hosts, but my methods are not so crude.”

His grin was growing again, the laughter bubbling in his throat. “I can hear their thoughts, too. And you know what? Sometimes I let them speak their own minds.” He leered. “You talked to your friends, and some of what they spoke was truth, and some was lies — but which was which? If you could have _heard_ the thoughts inside of their heads! The begging, the pleading!” 

The Drode laughed, and the sound echoed across the atrium.

He spoke in riddles, but I needed something more concrete. “Are they alive?” I asked, but he was laughing too hard to hear me, so I shouted it: “ _ARE THEY ALIVE?!_ ”

“Yes,” he said, wiping his eyes. “But they have been recanted, and I doubt my master will have any further reason for decanting once our trap is sprung. If he remembers them, he’ll torture them slowly. If he doesn’t — well those pods only last a hundred years, or so. You’re _welcome_ to join them.”

The Drode came closer to me. “How are those for options, Rachel? Die now, painfully. Be recanted, and sleep a while before the end, or, if Crayak likes, die slowly over millennia. What sounds best?”

I had been leaning against my back left leg, coiling energy into my muscles. I released it now, diverting all the force I could into the arm that held the tree limb. My body moved, my weapon heading straight for the Drode’s head —

— it passed through him, like he wasn’t there.

My momentum carried me forward, and I stumbled, receiving a sharp reminder that one of my ribs was screwed up. I tried to pivot, but I only made it halfway, still waving my stick like a lunatic, off balance and definitely not threatening.

“I will _miss_ you, Rachel,” the Drode said, chuckling. “You attack so ferociously, with so little thought of the consequences… such a gift is not rare, but it is remarkable to see it so purely, in one so young.”

“You aren’t here,” I said, the truth dawning on me.

“No,” the Drode said, and he snapped his fingers.

The room around me vanished. I was sitting on the black roof of some kind of huge building, overlooking an enormous plane of alleys and streets, a mechanical city that was _thrumming_ with activity: Crayak’s ship.

“I’m _here,_ ” the Drode said. “Although we will all be on Ket together, soon.”

Thousands — no, _millions_ of aliens were moving across the landscape in front of us, moving with the determination of worker ants, shuffling equipment, driving vehicles. They were moving in a synchronized way, each of them performing some specific, precise task. _What were they working toward?_

“What does this have to do with me?” I asked. “What did — what did you _find_ in my head?”

He stepped over me, close enough where I could have reached out and touched him. For good measure, I poked the stick, but it passed through his belly smoothly. It _looked_ like I was on Crayak’s ship — but I wasn’t really here.

“It is like building a mousetrap,” he said. “We can place a spring on top of wood, next to a little piece of cheese. But the contraption means nothing without the piece of toughened wire that slices in the end. You were that piece of wire, Rachel. As you were as an Animorph, so you are now. A tool, sharpened and fitted for killing.”

“That’s not true!” I exclaimed. I was panicking. My mouth filled up with spit, and my guts twisted into knots. “I don’t — I wasn’t —“

“You did the dirty work, over and over and over and over,” the Drode said. His smile was in my face now. He was growing larger — no, I was shrinking down. I was a projection, a hologram — and he was making me small so he could loom over me. All I could see was the Drode’s leering, vile grin. 

“But that wasn’t why you were Crayak’s favorite… it was because you _liked_ doing it.”

*

He vanished. I was on my knees, my hands in front of my face, my entire body shaking. Crayak’s ship was gone. I was on Ket. I was inside the crystal, where I had never left.

“I knew you wouldn’t rejoin your friends, you always _were_ predictable,” he said, suddenly standing right at my side. “So I guess you’ll just die here. My Minotaur is near.

“But let me leave you with a little piece of your history before you do, a word to remind you of your dirtiest work. Before you die, I’ll drag it out of that jumbled mess of bloody memories in your head. The most evil thing you ever did…”

He leaned into my ear, and he whispered:

_“David.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the feedback, everyone. It means a lot, and your comments and Kudos really do keep me going.
> 
> Next chapter to be released Monday, Oct. 29 at 9 p.m. EDT.
> 
> Chapters will be released every two days until the story is completed. This is an experiment in structured writing, and I do have a beginning, middle and end planned out. All going to say: this is not going to be a years-long endeavor, and I take your reading of the story seriously. Knowing I have some devoted readers is keeping me thinking and focused on this, and it's making the writing better!


	18. Madness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rachel's worst memories rip through her.

**** The Gap was having a sale.

A good one, too. _STOREWIDE!_ The decals said. 40 percent off everything. The perfect chance to pick up that blouse I had my eye on.

That went through my mind, and then I said: “Find a place to hide.”

I was perched on crossbeams, twenty feet above the first floor, where a tiger lay silent and bloody. Somewhere in the distance, an alarm was screaming.

<I’m not a murderer, you know,> The lion said. But it was just him and me. No one was watching. He couldn’t reach me at my perch. If he could have, I don’t think his warped ethics would have stopped him from shoving me, from clawing at me. Did it count if the fall killed me?

“Find a place to hide,” I told the lion. “Because I’ll make you a promise: I will kill you, David.”

He was fading into the shadows of the mall, disappearing past the Radio Shack. I could hear his laughter in my mind.

“I’ll kill you!” I screamed. “I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you!”

*

I was not on Earth. I was on Ket, and my mind was falling apart at seams I didn’t know it had. Memories were _exploding_ out of the fog in my mind, far faster than I could process. Every one was wrapped in that scream: _I’LL KILL YOU!_

I couldn’t stop the onslaught of emotions that roiled me — fear, rage, anger and worst  — _satisfaction —_ that whipped through my whole body. Somehow I was laughing and crying and screaming all at the same time. I kicked my legs, punched my fists, desperate to dissipate the vicious energy coursing through me. It felt like it would never stop.

And beneath the memories, another voice. This one as weak and as terrified as I was now, and thick with a pathetic horror.

_< You can’t do this! You can’t do this!>_

“Stop…” I choked out, but now I wasn’t on Ket. I was in the construction site, nearly where this whole thing began. I was drawing lines in the sand with a jagged piece of rebar. Ax was next to me in his human morph. His arms dangled as he watched me trace lines, cross them, draw them again, pointless patterns that represented nothing. We did not speak.

_< You can’t judge me! You’re not God!>_

Draw a line, draw another, scratch them both and make one more.

_< I’ll go away, you’ll never hear from me again — please, don’t do this.>_

“Oh God,” I groaned. The blue light of the Equatorial High Crystal snapped back into focus and I seized on it, determined to ignore what felt like shattering inside my mind. My name was Rachel, and if I wasn’t careful, I was about to go cuckoo-clock insane.

My palms were bloody from slapping them so hard against the ground — I had left handprints around me. The sight of the mess triggered something inside my mind and slightly dulled the screaming and the pleading inside my head. 

I was hurt, and everything else could be shoved aside until I was safe. My life depended on it.

_I’LL KILL YOU!_

It wasn’t enough — the roar of memories was growing again, a cacophony threatening to drag me literally screaming to the darkest of my times as an Animorph, something I was absolutely not ready to deal with. I had to stem the flow somehow, with any means possible —

In my panic, an idea occurred to me. I took my thumb and jammed it at the site of my wrecked rib.

The pain that came from it was agonizing, but it had the effect I needed: it was like a bucket of cold water had been doused over me. The pain forced my brain to focus on it rather than the angry ghosts at the back of my mind. My side hurt — it hurt so bad I could hardly breathe now — but at least I could think straight.

In my delirium, I hadn’t moved far from the statue, a short trail of bloody handprints showing where I had travelled. I glanced around warily, but the Drode was nowhere to be seen.

I doubted he would let me off this easy. What had he said?

_“I was going to have my minotaur stalk and kill you when it got dark…”_

So he was going to sic his monster on me. Great. Well, I’d escaped from it once. I could do it again.

I got to my feet, assessing the inside of the crystal. I wasn’t in a good spot — there was a lot of open area around me. I would do better if I were closer to a wall, where I could possibly find a way out.

I began to move, relieved at the tiny jolts of pain that spiked up my neck—they helped me keep my focus. Lights danced at my feet, and it gave me an idea.

“Exit,” I muttered. “They’ve been good with signs so far. They gotta have some kind of exit sign, right?”

I came to a fork in the path, where one of their signposts were. I studied the symbols, but I didn’t dare try feeding them into the Ketran part of my memories. I was having a hard enough time keeping the deluge from overwhelming me, and I couldn’t take the risk of losing control again.

“Come on, Rachel,” I grumbled. “It’s a symbol for a way out… how complicated can it be?”

There were eight glyphs on the board, and at first glance, they seemed cryptic. I disregarded the glyphs to the left, assuming, based on the post’s configuration, that they would be leading into the interior of the crystal. The four glyphs on the right looked like nothing I imagined would point to an exit sign.

From the way I had come, I heard something move.

Out of time, I fixated my eyes on the bottom symbol. It sort of looked like an arrow, maybe it was pointing a way out?

I pressed it.

It turned a light golden glow, and a stretch of the glyphs appeared in front of me.

“Close enough,” I muttered, and I began to move as fast I could.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're getting into some of the really nitty gritty Animorphs mythos now, so occasionally, I'll point out some spots in the series, if you want to reread for maximum enjoyment.
> 
> For this chapter, you could re-read the first and final pages of "The Solution," which this section directly references.
> 
> Next chapter will be released Wednesday, Oct. 31 (Happy Halloween everyone!) at 9 p.m. EDT.


	19. Perch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rachel runs out of options.

The Minotaur was closing in.

It hadn’t see me yet, which was the only reason I was still alive. The symbols had led me to a passageway on the far side of the crystal, which, encouragingly, was gently ascending upwards. I was breathing hard, but shallowly, trying to be as silent as possible. But it was definitely behind me, and on my trail.

_Faster, Rachel, faster_ , I thought, almost grateful for the burning in my ribs that was keeping me clear-headed.

The passageway expanded into a smaller chamber that seemed to be some sort of nexus. Three tunnels branched in front of me. I paused, uncertain which one to choose.

What did I know about this thing, anyway? It was some kind of freaky Crayak fusion of my predatory morphs, each one perfectly capable of inflicting a killing blow.

But there was a hidden advantage here, I realized, because I understood how those animals worked. I knew the physical aspects as well as I knew the mental ones. Sure, I knew exactly how those grizzly claws could slice and dice me, but I also knew that, unless threatened, the bear mind was typically docile. Crayak — and by extension, the Drode — had never spent time inside one of those minds, had never learned how to control or to enrage it. I had.

All those predators had one thing in common: they wanted an easy way to get prey. I could turn that against them.

I shot down the left tunnel, dragging my hands across the walls to leave bloody trails, spitting on the floor. I went about twenty yards, making the biggest mess I could, and then I shuffled back, darting into the tunnel on the far right. If I could throw off its scent, maybe I could get more time to find a way out of here!

I quickly realized that something was wrong with the far right tunnel — the light was dimmer here, and the glyphs were at stranger angles. It became narrower too, and dustier. This tunnel was much, much older than the others.

A roar came from behind me — the Minotaur had reached the nexus! It was too late to turn back. I powered forward, convinced, at least, that my attempts to confuse the monster had been successful. It sounded agitated and confused.

I turned a corner, and then: disaster.

A portion of the tunnel had collapsed in front of me; a shear part of the crystal had broken from the ceiling and smashed against the floor. It seemed to have had a shattering effect, as detritus was everywhere.

_But why?_ The rest of the crystal had been in impeccable shape. Why would this portion have failed?

I suddenly realized that this damage must have been caused when the crystal originally fell from the sky — this destruction was _ancient_.

I heard a roar behind me — it sounded closer than before. The Minotaur had seen through my trick!

I took a deep breath and pulled myself forward, through a break in the crystal beam. Air was flowing in front of me, so I knew the passageway wouldn’t dead end. But how small would it get? I would have to risk it.

For the first time ever, I wished that I could turn into a cockroach.

I started by crawling, but quickly I was on my belly, wriggling along. Every push caused spasms to erupt along my ribcage, and the pain was so acute I no longer felt grateful for the distraction. But the air was growing stronger now, and I was fairly certain the Minotaur couldn’t get far within this passage, it was too big.

Then — the opening widened! Far ahead, I saw daylight!

I shoved myself forward, but in my haste, my foot hit something it should not have. The crystal shuddered above me, and I abruptly realized that this structure was not as sturdy as it looked. 

_GO!_ I screamed inside my head, and then I was using my fists and feet to shove myself forward along the rock, exhaling every breath in me so I could make myself smaller.

Something crunched behind me and caught the tip of my shoe, holding me in place. Other things were falling behind me — the passageway was collapsing!

I panicked and yanked my foot, as hard as I could. It slipped out of my shoe, and then I was moving forward again. My head was emerging into a cavernous space! My arms were out, my chest!

As I tumbled to the floor, the passageway sealed itself behind me. I rolled over and stared at the rock where, only a few seconds before, I had wriggled through.

I rolled over, suddenly aware of all the scrapes, aches and pains that I accumulated in my frantic race through the tunnel. There _was_ daylight ahead of me — the Ketran sun was beginning to rise.

I forced myself to my feet slowly, breathing hard. The adrenaline was flowing out of me now, and the pain in side was ebbing. It was time to see where the symbols had led me.

I walked forward, then stopped. I stopped because I couldn’t go any further.

This tunnel opened up into a wide outcropping in the side of the crystal. I was standing on the part that had once been part of the ceiling. Above me were fixtures in the rock, places where Ketrans would have docked in to provide lift.

The crystal fell abruptly in front of me, into a sheer cliff that dropped thousands of feet. It wasn’t even a vertical drop — the crystal wall sloped beneath me. Below that, and as far as I could see to the horizon, was shimmering, black rock, waves of heat coming up from it. Even if I jumped, and even if the fall didn’t kill me, I couldn’t possibly survive in this wasteland.

I just sort of stared at it for a few minutes. I had nowhere to go. I couldn’t go backward. I couldn’t go forward. The only people who knew I was alive were enslaved or dead. 

I had thought I was surviving. I had thought that I was barely scraping by, but I could make it if I pushed just a little more. But I was out of luck now.

*

“You were always headed here.”

I didn’t look at the Drode. I wasn’t surprised he was here. Why would he miss the chance to twist the knife?

“You led me here,” I said. “You did all this on purpose. To taunt me.”

“I didn’t know it would work out like this!” He laughed. “I knew you would fight. You did in your first life too, right to the bloody, bloody end.”

“My friends and I must have really hurt you a lot, to have you hate us so much,” I said.

Then I looked at him and flashed him my widest, go-to-hell smile.

His cheeks puffed out, and the green around his eyes stretched out. Oh, he hadn’t liked that.

“You could have sat by his side!” He shouted. “He wanted YOU! You, of all people! You would have been exalted! You would have ruled any number of worlds! You could have crushed any of your enemies, you could have created your _own_ enemies to destroy!”

I stared at the fury in his eyes, and I thought, inexplicably, of my youngest sister when she was five years old, in the middle of a tantrum.

And suddenly I understood why he was so angry. I knew why he taunted and tortured me.

My laughter started small, just on the tip of my lips, but then it caught on like wildfire, and soon I could hardly stand, my entire body shaking from the belly laughs that were erupting from me.

“I get it now!” I said, tears beginning to stream down my face. “You’re — you’re _jealous_!”

He emitted a high-pitched keening sound, fury evident in his eyes.

“That’s all this is, isn’t it? You were the favorite child until someone else came along, and now Daddy doesn’t love you anymore. Ever since Crayak met me, and Jake, and the others — he’s had you trying to get us closer to him.” I whistled through my teeth. “That must drive you _insane_.”

“I’ll kill you,” the Drode snarled.

_I’ll kill you!_ The face of a lion entered my mind, but I gritted my teeth against it.

“Does he even know you’re here?” I said “Does he know that you’ve been trying to kill me?” I didn’t wait for a reply. “I bet he doesn’t. I bet he wanted you to bring me back to him, so he and I could carry out whatever screwed-up planet-killing fantasy he’s been running since the dawn of time.”

I had struck something. The Drode’s weird body had frozen, for just an instant. There was more than rage here now — there was _fear_.

I smelled the kill, and I leaned into it. “You… you lied to him. You told him I died, didn’t you? If he knew you’d lied to him —“

“He won’t know,” the Drode interrupted. The deer-in-headlights terror was gone from his face. “You’ll die here. When that sick and vicious thing inside your head finally awakens — and it _will_ awaken, Rachel — it will _literally_ drive you over the edge.”

“I’ll get off this rock,” I snarled. The words were coming smoothly out of the fog in my mind; I weaponized them, wielded them. “Find a place to hide. Because I’ll make you a promise: _I’ll kill you_ , Drode.”

He held up a stubby hand, and I was somewhat satisfied to see all traces of smirk gone from his mouth. He looked like he was about to say something, but instead, he snapped his fingers and vanished.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Halloween, ya'll!
> 
> Next chapter to be released Friday, Nov. 2 at 9 p.m. ET.


	20. Not There

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Drode taunts Rachel with one more torture.

I was not alone with the Ketran dawn.

A second after the Drode’s disappearing act, I heard a rumbling behind me, and I heard a familiar growl.

Behind me stood the Minotaur, blinking and confused on the stone.

I couldn’t help it — I screamed in frustration. It wasn’t fair! I hadn’t asked to be brought back to life in a world more awful than the one I had left! The Minotaur took a step backward, its snout briefly dropping open.

I glanced at the ledge. There was no way I could survive a fall, and even if I somehow did, I would still have to contend with what I was pretty sure was a volcanic wasteland.

But if I was cornered… I could at least go out swinging. 

“All right then,” I said, bending my knees and arching my hands into claws. “ _Come and get me, you mutant freak!_ ”

The Minotaur stared at me stupidly. It didn’t seem to understand why I didn’t seem afraid. It made a grunting sound, deep in its throat. The grunt became a snarl, and as the jaw opened, I saw rows and rows of hammerhead teeth, and I heard a grizzly’s roar.

I roared right back, tipping my head and shrieking with the loudest sounds I could.

_What am I waiting for?_ I thought, and I started to run toward it, primal screams tearing out of my throat. If this was the last sound I made, so be it!

It drew close, I brought my arm up, I slashed with my fingers —

— into nothing! I stumbled forward, tripped over my own feet and crashed into the crystal floor. What had gone wrong? I should be dead right now.

I pivoted on my back and pulled myself up. The Minotaur had its back to me. It was at the edge of the cliff, looking down, right, left. It was as confused as I was.

Unless…

“You aren’t here,” I said, and a piece of the puzzle plunked into place. “You’re — you’re a hologram. Or a projection. Or whatever the hell the Drode does to himself to show himself here… he’s doing it to you too.”

The Minotaur pivoted, roared and charged. It was _terrifying_ to see, but this time, I didn’t move. I closed my eyes, and while I heard the sound of his roar, I couldn’t even feel the air move when he passed through.

I opened my eyes to see its gnashing, whirling teeth. The Minotaur was attempting to attack my face, and it was failing.

“You aren’t here!” I yelled, and it took a step back, angry and confused.It dropped down to four legs and backed up, like a wolf, growling low in its throat. It snorted, pacing from side to side.

Of course the Drode would have pulled this final, cruel trick. He wanted me to think I was about to be torn apart again, so I would jump from the ledge and burn alive on the volcanic floor.

“I’m too smart for him,” I told the Minotaur. “Or maybe just too stubborn.” I sat down on the crystal to rest my legs. “Not that it’s done me any good.”

*

We sat like that for a while, me and the monster. It was a fascinating thing to watch move. All those bits and pieces were cobbled together, and they didn’t always work. It could run, but not quickly, due to the bulk, and it was clumsy, due to feet too large for its legs. Occasionally, it would try and charge me. It would begin its roaring, start pawing its feet, and then those nasty teeth would be up in my face. It would stop if I yelled loud enough, then back off, annoyed that I wasn’t torn into pieces. Eventually, it laid down nearby me, at a loss for what to do.

“Where are you, anyway?” I asked the Minotaur. I thought about my question, and then remember the large gash on my shoulder that it had given me at the facility. It had definitely been real _there._ “You’re back at that lab, or whatever that place was, aren’t you? Could you do me a favor? Could you find a phone and dial up some help? You’re probably going to poof and vanish back there whenever the Drode’s magic runs out, but I’m still going to be stuck here.”

It made a grumbling sound, rolled its eyes at me. It kept snicking out its snout closer to me, trying to find my scent. I reached out and tried to touch it, but my hand just passed right through.

“Look, I don’t like it either,” I said. “I have to die, and I’m badly dressed. You know, when I died the first time, I looked good. I wore my nice morphing leotard and everything. Now? Now I’m in knockoff Fruit of the Loom.”

The Minotaur snorted, kicking up dust, and then it vanished.

*

I sighed. It was strange to think about, but I had sort of been hoping it would stick around for longer. I wouldn’t be alone when I died.

I leaned my head back and closed my eyes. I would probably jump before I starved, I knew that. But I could enjoy the breeze for a little bit.

It _was_ getting hotter now. The sun was about to break the horizon, and it was almost uncomfortably warm.

_If only I were a bird_ , I thought. I closed my eyes and tried to remember how it felt to fly. _If only I could fly now… the thermals would be amazing… I could fly where the Ketrans used to…_

*

There was electricity in the air.

I had been dozing, trying to ignore the heat, but I stopped when I realized all my hair was standing on end. I could hear something amidst the wind, a grinding sound, the sound of an engine.

I held my hand up to shield my eyes from the glare, and I saw — not far away, even — a flying spaceship.

It was as long as a school bus, darkly colored, with two crooked wings. Jagged gashes ran from the front to the back — it had been in a fight recently.

The fog spit out a memory: I was in the construction site. I was with the Animorphs, and we were staring at the sky…

It was an Andalite ship, and it was approaching me quickly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For hardcore fans, by a hardcore fan.
> 
> Thanks for reading, everyone. We're not quite at the halfway point of this story yet, so I appreciate ya'll sticking with me. I've been releasing "scenes" rather than full-fledged chapters, which might at times be frustrating, but has been useful for me as I exercise my writing muscles.
> 
> Next chapter to be released Sunday, Nov. 4 at 9 p.m. ET.


	21. Rescue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rachel is reunited with some familiar faces.

I had nowhere to go, and I was exhausted, so I didn’t bother to get up. If this ship was an enemy, I was a sitting duck, and getting shot by lasers would probably be more painless than a long fall. _Probably._

The ship descended slowly, and then hovered about twenty feet out. Up close, I could see it was battered and bruised, with streaks of char across the top. Someone had shot this ship, and they had done so recently.

It hung there, quivering in the morning air. I just looked at it, too tired to do anything else. After a few minutes, I lifted up my arm and waved. 

“Hey!” I yelled. “It’s me. _Rachel._ What’s up?”

The ship moved closer, and a ramp opened from the bottom. It only opened halfway before it got stuck, and I could hear grinding inside. 

This spaceship was not in great shape.

It opened about three feet, which was enough for me to see a woman standing, hunched over, watching me intently. She looked young. She was holding a curved knife in her hand — no, that wasn’t right, her finger was curled around a trigger. It was a gun shaped like a blade. She was pointing it at my head.

I locked my eyes with hers. They were a dark brown color, intense and wide.

The fog responded: _I knew her eyes_. 

*

A memory emerged. I was in the mall, I had spied a new store on the directory, at the far end of the mall, almost behind the Blockbuster, where I never went. 

It was the end of a long shopping trip, and I was begging someone to come with me and check the new store out, just real quick. But she was saying that our ride was here and it was time to go. So I stuck out my lower lip in a mock-pouty way, and I looked dead into her face —

I examined this fierce woman, from the way her hair was cut to the darkness of her skin. And I became certain: this was the woman who had wandered the mall with me for hours on end. 

This was my best friend.

“ _Cassie?”_ I said. “Is… is your name… Cassie?”

The hand holding the gun trembled.

“Yeah, Rachel,” Cassie said, and she lowered the gun. “Yeah. It’s me.”

*

It took a while to clamber onto the gangplank. My muscles were exhausted and knotted from my ordeal. Cassie had to help me, hitching her hands under my arms and dragging me, undignified, into the belly of the ship.

When I finally got to my feet, I saw we were in a small, grimy chamber with a door on one end. Cassie walked to it and activated a small touchscreen.

“I brought her in,” Cassie said. She didn’t sound happy about it. There was defeat in her voice.

Someone responded: “It’s going to be okay.”

Behind us, the ramp began to lift, metal grinding in protest.

I took a step toward Cassie.

She pivoted, the gun suddenly raised and trained on me.

“Hey,” I said. I raised my hands up. She looked ferocious again. “Hey, I’m not here to hurt you. I _know_ you. We were friends, weren’t we? We were close.”

“What did they do to you?” Cassie asked. “You’re dead. You were dead — _Jesus,_ Rachel, I saw you die. I watched you get torn apart when there was nothing I could do. It took me two years and a _lot_ of therapy to come to grips with what happened to you.” Her face was quivering; she simultaneously looked like a mercenary and a frightened child. “I still… I still dream about it, sometimes.

“So you gotta answer some questions, now, because if I even think you’re some kind of sick Crayak trick, I’m going to shred you right now.”

Her threat hung in the air while I tried to think of how to respond. My first instinct was to yell at her the way I had yelled at the Drode. I wanted to demand she put down that gun and chill out, how dare she threaten me.

But instead, I whispered. “We used to go to the mall on Saturdays, didn’t we? Before the construction site… that was our thing. Sometimes we would go see a movie.” The fog burped out another memory. “That’s what we were doing that day, wasn’t it? The day Elfangor came. We went to see _Independence Day_ , and it had been out for a while so there was no one in the theater.”

“Stop it,” Cassie snapped. “Before doesn’t matter. _How are you alive?_ ”

“They — they made an _ixcila_ , when I died,” I said.

“The _Yeerks_?” Cassie shook her head. “That’s not possible.”

“Someone else was on the Blade Ship,” I said. “A woman — a Chee. She made it.”

“ _What_?” Cassie asked, and I saw an expression of genuine surprise spread across her face. “Erek, what is she talking about?”

The intercom responded, and this time, I recognized the voice.

“Bring her up,” Erek King said. “I’m afraid I haven’t told you everything, Cassie, although I assure you I had the best of intentions."

*

“Hello, Rachel,” Erek said. He waited for me to speak, but I didn’t reply. “Do you remember me?”

“Yep,” I said. 

For once, I remembered someone, wholly and completely. And what I remembered was that I had never really liked Erek.

We were in some kind of kitchenette that had been transformed into a medical ward. There was a skylight, but it was dim in here because Erek had piloted the ship into one of the caverns. Apparently, Ket is a very hot place during the day.

Erek was with us now, in full android treatment, without his hologram. Cassie had brought out rolls of gauze and ointment, but she hadn’t started to apply any of it to me. She leaned against the wall, glaring at Erek.

“How did you know about Lourdes?” He said.

The name was familiar, but nothing came out of the fog. “Who?”

“The Chee woman who stowed away on the Blade Ship, at my request.”

Cassie snapped: “You never told us that!”

“No,” Erek said. “I didn’t.”

“Why?”

“Because it was the end of the war, and you were behaving like animals,” Erek said. His voice was icy. “Jake put me in a position where I had no choice but to cooperate. He was willing to take innocent lives —“

“No,” Cassie said. “That’s not what I meant. It’s obvious why you kept it secret. Why did you send Lourdes onto the Blade Ship in the first place?”

It was strange watching an android try to find the right words. Lights flickered along his body, something purred inside him.

“I believed — I hoped — there was an alternative approach, one where fewer people would have to die,” Erek said. “If Jake hadn’t forced my hand, I would not have considered it. But his decision to threaten innocent lives changed the acceptable parameters for action. I didn’t have a choice —“

“What were you trying to do?” Cassie cut him off.

“Jake and I both knew that Tom’s Yeerk would betray the Animorphs and seize control of the Blade Ship. My plan was to have Lourdes sneak onboard and hide herself for as long as it took. She had infiltrated the Blade Ship before. She knew how to access it.”

“That doesn’t make sense. She would have been useless in a battle,” I said.

“You never intended her to fight,” Cassie said. “You just wanted her there.”

Erek nodded. “She could have watched the Yeerks, recorded their movements, possibly sabotaged their weapons systems. Eventually, I hoped she would have gotten a message back.”

“You were going to let the Blade Ship escape,” Cassie accused. “Even though you _knew_ they intended to enslave other species. You were willing to let that happen!”

“I didn’t have a choice,” Erek sounded tired. “I picked the way I thought offered the most hope.

“And I was right,” he said, after a moment. “The Blade Ship would have still escaped if I hadn’t sent her. Nothing would be worked out differently.”

Cassie looked furious. “You should have told us — it was _hell_ knowing that ship was on the loose!”

“I was done with all of you,” Erek snapped. “You wanted nothing to do with me, and I wanted nothing to do with war criminals.”

“Don’t you _dare_ call us —“ They began to shout over each other.

“HEY!” I said, waving my arms around. “I’m bleeding here.”

They stopped talking and looked at me, like they had forgotten I existed.

“I think you two have some things you want to say to each other, and I’m sorry I brought it all up. And — you all can work through your issues later, because I do not care. Erek, I’m guessing you never heard back from Lourdes?”

“That’s correct,” Erek said. “Nothing. In five years, nothing.”

“It’s hard to kill one of you, right?”

“Very,” Erek said.

I took a deep breath.

“She’s in bad shape, but she’s alive. At least, she was a couple days ago.”

Erek leaned back on his mechanical paws. He looked unsteady. “You’re sure?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Where is she?”

“Back — back where I came,” I took a deep breath. “She’s with the other Animorphs. Jake, Marco, Tobias, Ax — they’re alive.”

Something settled into place in my mind, and I was suddenly filled with fire.

“ _And we can save them_ ,” I said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're entering a new phase of the story now — if you're still with me, I hope you're ready for some ANSWERS!
> 
> On a side note, there is a very obscure callback in this story that I wanted to flag, which might seem a little pompous, but I'm proud of it, ha. When Erek references that Lourdes infiltrated the Blade Ship, this actually happened in the original series, in that bonkers book where Cassie wound up in Australia. You absolutely don't need to re-read that one to enjoy this chapter (it's definitely not my favorite book).
> 
> We've still got a ways to go on this adventure, but I've still got the fire in me, and I hope you do too.
> 
> Next chapter to be released Tuesday, Nov. 6, at 9 p.m. ET (if in the US, get out and VOTE AGAINST TRUMPISM please!)


	22. The Ixcila Encrypted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Erek reveals dark truths about the ixcila.

They were looking at me like I had sprouted two heads.

“You saw them?” Cassie asked. “You — you talked to them?”

“Sort of,” I said. I remembered the way their bodies had shifted and changed and coalesced before Lourdes had borked my brain. What had the Drode called it? “They’ve been… _recanted_.”

“What does that mean?” Cassie asked.

“I… don’t know,” I said. I was thinking of the Drode’s laugh: _Those pods only last a hundred years._ “But I think Lourdes was decanted, whatever that means. They had to have her free, so she could touch me.”

“What?” Erek said.

“They were trying — they wanted something inside my head. The Ellimist’s memories. When Lourdes touched me, they were able find them. They _took_ something, but I don’t know what.”

I sounded insane. Cassie was looking at me like I was insane.

I turned to Erek. “Ax — well, the Ax- _thing_ — he said the Chee changed the _ixcila_ tech. He said parts of my mind were encrypted. Is that true?” I paused. “And while we’re there — how did you even _get_ it?”

“We didn’t want it,” Erek said. “You remember the last Arn — Quafijinivon?”

“Sort of,” I said.

“He came to us before he went to you. He knew he didn’t have much time left, and he was worried about what would happen if the _ixcila_ technology fell into the wrong hands. He knew the Chee were good at keeping secrets.”

“ _Very_ good with secrets,” Cassie said, an edge to her voice. “How did he find you to begin with?”

Erek shrugged. “He wouldn’t say. It caused considerable unease among us, but what choice did we have? In a way, the _ixcila_ grants immortality. We were basically immortal already — it made sense that we should control it. We could keep it from getting into the wrong hands.”

“But you didn’t leave it alone,” I said.

“We did not,” Erek said. “I hoped that the _ixcila,_ modified, could help foster peace. It is a powerful thing to retain context across generations — humans only retain a fraction of it, sometimes none. I wondered what it would be like to have that knowledge contextualized in the experiences of a person — it would be pure, unfiltered, unquestionable truth — and it would be indestructible.”

“I’ve got a lot of problems with that,” Cassie said. “To start with — “

Erek interrupted. “Lourdes had problems with it too. It was she who pointed out the most glaring flaw. You humans lead short, bloody lives often punctuated and ended by trauma — it has always been that way. She thought — and I agreed — that it would be a cruel thing to force someone to revisit their trauma by resurrecting them.

“So yes — we modified the _ixcila_. We rewrote it so that the most painful memories were inaccessible.”

“That’s not fair!” I erupted. “Those are the things that give other things meaning — if you cut them out, the rest of it doesn’t hang together. You just wind up lost — you can’t see how anything connects in your brain, and it’s _horrible._ ”

“Lourdes pointed out that possibility as well,” Erek said patiently. “That’s why we _encrypted_ the memories rather than erasing them. Then, upon resurrection, the Chee who made the _ixcila_ could control the emergence of the memories through touch. It seemed like a good solution — the subject would be able to choose what memories were returned to them. They could accept or reject the most vile, or frightening ones.”

He looked away from me. “I can see that you didn’t have a choice, and for that… for that, I _am_ sorry.”

*

Now I knew why I hadn’t remembered my violent death, and why most of the war had been so fuzzy. Those horrible memories had been hidden from me, and due to proximity, so had Toomin’s. What _had_ Crayak been trying to find in there, anyway?

They were both watching me. Cassie looked uneasy.

“Why — why did Lourdes have it with her? The Arn tech,” Cassie said. “Why did she bring it to the Blade Ship?”

“It was her idea. Only a Chee could use it — it could not fall into the wrong hands. It’s very small, really, and built into her body.”He took a deep breath. “If it came to it, Lourdes planned to use it on Jake’s brother. Tom, through all of this, was an innocent.”

He should have stopped there, but he didn’t.

“I do not know why Lourdes used it on you instead, Rachel.”

His tone was cold, and I caught his meaning. _Tom_ was innocent, and thus worthy of saving. I was _not_ , and thus, I deserved to die on the Blade Ship.

I might have gotten angry, if I didn’t agree with him.

*

I shook it off.

“Lourdes is still there — back where I came from. She’s lying on the floor, and she’s hurt and she’s not moving,” I said. “We can — I don’t know, put more batteries in her or something. But we _can_ save her. And the others are still there —we can decant them the way they decanted Lourdes.”

Erek didn’t move, and Cassie looked sick.

“What’s _wrong_ with you?” I exploded. “How can you just — just _sit_ there?”

“I think you should sit down,” Cassie said.

“I know where they’re being held,” I said desperately.“We can go there. We can — “

“We can’t go anywhere, right now,” Erek said. “It’s the heat of the day. The surface is more than 400 degrees Fahrenheit, and in the state our ship is in, we can’t regulate our temperature. We’ve taken shelter in a cave not far from where we’ve found you. We can leave when the sun sets.”

I uttered a small groan of frustration. Erek heard it. “We can discuss it — if Lourdes is alive, I would very much like to see her again.”

“Why aren’t you more _excited?”_ I said to Cassie. “It’s Jake — it’s all of them. Isn’t that — isn’t that why you’re here?”

“No,” Cassie said.

*

I was so stunned I almost fell over. 

I suddenly realized — I had no idea why the two of them were here. I had just assumed they had come searching for us.

She sounded so tired. “We weren’t supposed to be here at all. And Jake and I — ” she stammered. “It’s just — it’s not like how it was during the war.

“And besides,” she said after a minute. “If… if they are alive, there’s not much we can do to help them.”

“What are you _talking_ about?” I said, furious. “We can rescue them! We can bring them back to Earth!”

“Unfortunately, we can’t. This ship was never intended to go far from its Dome Ship, which no longer exists,” Erek said. “We’re low on fuel. We can’t even leave the atmosphere at this point.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For hardcore fans, by a hardcore fan.
> 
> This section retains some obvious references to "The Prophecy", but I didn't go too far into the canon because not much of it applies. If you'd like to dig in, though, you can read the chapters leading up to when the Animorphs take off for the Hork-Bajir home world.
> 
> Writing on this story is going solid — I'm ten chapters/scenes ahead of ya'll, and I'm racing toward the conclusion of the story. Unclear yet as to how many chapters this will be total, but I absolutely do have an end in mind, and I highly doubt this will last to Christmas with the two-day releases.
> 
> Next chapter to be released Thursday, Nov. 8, at 9 p.m. ET.


	23. Scars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rachel senses how much things have changed.

**** While we had been talking, I had been bleeding all over the floor. Cassie finally noticed when I nearly slipped, and she sprang into action. She asked Erek to leave so she could clean me up, and he complied. I sat in front of her while she cleaned my wounds.

“Does that hurt?”

“No.”

“This?”

“Nope.”

“How about — “

“ _YES!”_ She withdrew her hand from my side, which was throbbing.

“Probably a broken rib,” Cassie said. “I can fix that.”

“How long will it take to heal?”

“A couple months,” Cassie said. “Just gotta keep you from getting pneumonia. That’s the only real danger there.”

“Will we even live that long?”

“There’s food on board — it’s not great, but it’s edible. Erek doesn’t eat, so if it’s just the two of us… maybe? Water’s the only real problem, but there must be some in that jungle.”

She began to run a rag down the cut on my shoulder, the one that had come from the Minotaur’s claw. I winced.

“Sorry,” she said. “I’ve gotta clean this.”

“You’d think I would have a higher pain tolerance…”

“Not really,” Cassie said. “We never had pain like this. We just morphed back to human, and we’d be back to normal.”

Inexplicably, my heart began to pound, and I felt the vision at the edges of my eyes waiver a little bit. It was hard to speak, and it had nothing to do with the shooting pain where she cleaned the junk from my shoulder. I was remembering a battle — I couldn’t have told you which one, but it was a _bad_ one. I was an elephant, and I was crushing a Taxxon. It popped beneath my enormous foot, burst entrails wrapping around my toenails. I closed my eyes and shuddered.

“It wasn’t normal,” I said. “It never went back to normal. I couldn’t remember it all at first, but it’s coming back now, little by little.”

She sighed, but she didn’t slow down or meet my eye. “Brace yourself — antiseptic time.” She sprayed something from a bottle, and I yelped.

“Last year, I fell off a mountain,” Cassie said. “It was in Yellowstone. It was bad, but it could have been a whole lot worse. I was hiking, and I slipped. Fell twenty feet, right off the side of the trail. I broke my ankle and my wrist, and it hurt like hell.

“The lucky thing was, I was a half mile from the visitor’s center. I was by myself, and I could sort of walk, so I hobbled back. The park ranger recognized me.

“We talked a little. He asked me what happened, and I told him. And I kept thinking, _why is he staring at me like that?_ I saw he had a camera in his hand, and then I realized: he was waiting for me to morph. He wanted to see me to do it. To him it was just… a _novelty._

“I just stood there for a few minutes, and then I finally asked him to call me an ambulance. He actually looked mad when they wheeled me out, because he didn’t have his photo. It was a long wait and a long drive to the hospital, and I was in pain for all of it.”

She rolled the gauze across my shoulder, tightened it. I didn’t say anything.

“You want to know why I didn’t morph,” she said finally. “I didn’t morph because the pain felt _good_ to me. It felt _right_. I hurt so many people, so many things that could _think_ and _feel_. I get so mad when Erek calls us _war criminals —_ but at the end of the day, a lot of people lived the rest of their lives with injuries I caused. And I could just — chase all my pain away in a few minutes.

“The ankle took six weeks to heal,” she said. “The wrist, a month.”

She adjusted the gauze, pause. She thought for a second, and rolled another layer.

“Did it help?” I finally asked. “Feeling the pain like that — did it help?”

“No,” she said. “After I’d healed, I realized it was pointless.”

“Why?”

“We have scars, you and me — all of us,” she said. “Long ones. Deep ones. We got them all the time, scars on top of scars. We were cut over and over.” She set down the bandages, her task finished. “Some scars went away when we demorphed, but some didn’t. My accident made me realize that they were still real, even if they weren’t physical. And they were still resonating with me. They were still deciding how I behaved.”

“Scars on the mind,” I said, nodding.

“Yeah.” Cassie said. “Scars you can’t morph away.” She looked like she was about to say something else, but she bit her lip.

“Say it,” I said. “Whatever you’re thinking. Just say it.”

“I think… of all of us, Rachel… I think your scars were the deepest.”

*

After my pain had subsided, Cassie took me to the small and cramped bridge. Erek was sitting in the captain’s chair.

“So it’s just you two?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Cassie said. “We’re all that’s left.”

“How about… how about you start at the beginning?”

She rolled her head along her shoulders, sat on a bulkhead and lifted her legs to her chest.

“Things went crazy after the Animorphs disappeared,” she said. “It took a while for the news to leak. A _lot_ longer than it should have… The Andalite brass wanted to keep it under wraps. I think they really thought they would come back.

“I was doing a lot of government work, I was even in the White House for a while,” she said. “I wanted to work in the U.N., and really focus on interplanetary relations. But it all fell apart when the Animorphs vanished. Some rumor got around that I was considering joining a rescue team, and then _everyone_ was hounding me about it. Do you know how many elementary classes wrote letters to me begging me to save them? Seventy-three.

“The media got really into it. I guess for them, it was a good story.” She lifted her hands and tipped her face upward in a mock theatrical pose. “ _The Last Animorph! Only she can rescue Prince Jake, General Aximili and Dreamboat Marco!”_

“They did _not_ call him _Dreamboat_ _Marco_!” I yelled.

“I _know!_ ” she rolled her eyes. “I couldn’t _believe_ when that caught on.

“Everything was a distraction. I couldn’t get anything done. No one in any kind of serious government work wanted anything substantial to do with me. I probably could have made a lot of money, but _I wanted to do more_.

When politicians started using me in their speeches, I knew that was it. Everybody wanted to be the one who convinced ‘ _The Last Animorph’_ to go back into battle.” She sounded bitter. “I wanted to move on, but I couldn’t. I was trapped by a legacy I wanted to move past.”

*

I was suddenly angry with her. 

“Why _didn’t_ you want to go?” I demanded. “How many times did Jake save your life? Tobias? Ax? Marco? You were just going to leave them?”

“She believed they were dead,” Erek said. “As did I.”

“You couldn’t know that,” I replied. “You were going to spend the rest of your life talking about how aliens could be nicer to each other. Our friends risked their lives for you!”

“That isn’t fair —“

“Tell me,” I interrupted. “Tell me how it isn’t fair.”

“Jake came to me before he left,” Cassie said. “He was confused a lot those couple years. He mumbled a lot, and it was usually hard to get a straight answer from him. But not that day. No, he was excited that day. And I knew that one way or another, he wasn’t coming back. War was all he had left, and he wasn’t planning to survive another one.”

“You could’ve stopped him! You could’ve helped — “

“I did _everything_ , Rachel,” Cassie exclaimed. “I dragged him to psychiatrist. I called him over and over until he stopped picking up. I held his hand during Visser Three’s trial. And you know what? Every time, _I made things worse._ And I had to move on. Because it was hurting me, too.

“I wasn’t in love with him any more,” Cassie said. “I’m not sure I ever was. It was just a teenage crush that turned into a fantasy we told ourselves to get us through the war. And then the war ended, and finally we could both see it for what it really was: _a lie_.

“I don’t regret staying on Earth,” Cassie said. “He was going out there to die. There was nothing I could do to stop that.”

_Scars you can’t see_ , I thought.

“The others,” I said. “Why did they go?”

“Marco — I think Marco did it for Ax. He knew Jake had no intention of returning, but I think he really thought they could bring Ax back,” She sighed. “Maybe he thought he could save Jake too.”

“Wait — what happened to Ax?”

“He was the first to go missing,” Erek said. “In the end, they were all looking for the same thing. They wanted to tie off that last, loose end, because it was all they had left. Cassie was the only one smart enough to let it go.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The Blade Ship,” Cassie said. “They all went looking for the Blade Ship, and they didn’t come back.”

*

“What about Tobias?” I asked.

Cassie looked at the floor. “I don’t think he had anything else going for him,” she said. “I tried to stay in touch with him, for a while, but it didn’t last. The only thing we really had in common… was grief.”

She paused and looked me up and down, her expression impossible to read. “Neither of us wanted to talk about that.”

“He… he didn’t get back with his mom?”

“He did not,” Erek said. “Loren looked for him, though, for a long time. Eventually, she gave up.”

“How do you know that?” I asked.

“She came to me,” Erek said. “About a year after the war, after he flew off. I was at a dog park, and one day, she showed up with a German Shepherd. She recognized me. She asked me if I knew where her son was. I didn’t.”

“What did she do?”

“She cried,” Erek said. “She was afraid for him. She knew he was in pain, and she wanted to find him. I think she still felt guilty for the years he didn’t know her. I comforted her as best I could. Eventually, she went home.”

My body shook. The Tobias- _thing_ had spun a different tale and of _course_ it would have lied, but I had wanted so _badly_ for it to be true. I wanted for him to have had the happy life he’d always wanted.

Inside my head, a penny dropped.

_What else had they lied about?_

*

“Cassie — what happened after the war?” I asked. “The short version is fine, but I need to know. I need to know the truth.”

She exhaled.

“It didn’t turn out the way we expected,” she said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For hardcore fans, by a hardcore fan.
> 
> Next chapter to be released Saturday, Nov. 10 at 9 p.m. ET.
> 
> Also....
> 
> > "how about you start at the beginning?"
> 
> See what I did there??????


	24. The Truth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> None of it worked out the way they expected.

Over and over, Cassie broke my heart.

*

She told me about Jake first. She described their unexpected estrangement, which began with the pomp and circumstance following the war and just never stopped. She told me how the only time he ever left his parents’ house was to visit my grave.

“ _What?!”_ I erupted. “We won a war — and _all_ he could do was mope?”

She smiled sadly. “Marco and I knew you’d hate that.”

Marco had done well, she said, which didn’t surprise me. He’d gone on the talk show circuit and dated supermodels. He gave candid interviews where he described the funnier bits of the war (apparently his “lobster” dialogue on Leno was legendary).

Ax never carried a burden the way Jake had, perhaps because a lifetime of expecting warfare had prepared him for what followed. He ascended into the echelons of the Andalite military, and seemed to be doing just fine until he was swallowed into the Blade Ship.

And Tobias had flown away to forget his humanity, and to forget about me. But even after all this time, under those hawk feathers, those sharp talons, he was still a lost boy who Jake once saved from a swirlie, and he was still willing to follow Jake wherever he went, if Jake invited him.

And I had been erased. They called Cassie _The Last Animorph_ , but Tobias and I — we were _The Forgotten Animorphs._ We were the footnotes in a history book students were forced to read for extra credit.

That was the extent of my legacy.

*

I was so angry, I couldn’t speak.

I paced across the bridge, shaking my head. Cassie and Erek could see I was obviously upset, but they offered no comfort. It was the right move, because if they had tried, I probably would have screamed.

I had to say something, so I said: “You still haven’t told me why you’re here.”

Cassie nodded. “Things got pretty rough for me, after they disappeared. I wanted to move past it, but I couldn’t. I told you how I got hurt — how I didn’t morph it out.”

She shrugged her shoulder toward Erek. “Then he showed up one day, and convinced me to get involved in this,” she glared at him. “Why was that, Erek?”

“You know why, now,” Erek said. “But I want you to know — and this is the absolute truth — I thought there was no danger. How could I have known what was out there? Even the Andalites had no idea. I did not give you the whole truth because I thought I didn’t need to. If I had thought, even for a second, that you would be in danger, I would not have withheld my motivations for you.”

“Keep going, R2D2,” I said.

“For a very long time, the Andalites have had an uneasy peace with a race called the Kelbrids,” Erek said. “The Kelbrids are warlike and highly secretive — no one has ever seen a Kelbrid. They take pains to ensure complete radio silence. You don’t talk to the Kelbrids — the Kelbrids talk to you. We don’t even know their language. The Andalites had a treaty with them: Leave us alone, and we’ll leave you alone.

“The Animorphs were in Kelbrid space when they vanished. Of _course_ ,” (he emphasized the word with dry sarcasm), “the Andalites had no _idea_ they were even out there. The Animorphs had just _happened_ to have hijacked an experimental Yeerk vessel that _just happened_ to be modified for human use.”

I blinked. “The Andalites wanted to save Ax, but they didn’t want to get involved.”

“Like they always do,” Cassie said icily.

Erek continued. “The Andalites braced themselves for a Kelbrid response — the Chee continued to monitor the fleet’s communications, to the extent that it interests us. But for a very long time — two years — there was nothing from the Kelbrids, even after the news about the Animorphs leaked out.

“That changed several weeks ago, when the Andalites began receiving messages from the Kelbrids of increasing urgency.”

“They wanted to go to war?” I asked.

“No,” Erek said. “They wanted to discuss an alliance, and they were quite serious about it.”

“Why?”

“They wouldn’t say,” Erek said. “It was anyone’s guess — Andalite intelligence had virtually nothing on Kelbrid motivations. But I don’t think it’s complicated. You can probably make the same guess that they did.”

I thought for a minute, and then it came to me. 

“A threat,” I said. “The Kelbrids were under attack, or they thought they were about to be. And they didn’t have the firepower to win.”

“Exactly,” Erek said, nodding. “They designated a neutral zone not far from this planet. If we agreed, they would willingly discuss changes to the treaty.”

“The Andalites were interested?”

“ _Very._ Kelbrid silence had concerned and infuriated them for many years, especially due to the proximity to the Andalite world. The fragile nature of this agreement was considered a powder keg by political scientists. It was impossible to know how close things were to interstellar warfare at any moment.

“I reached out to Cassie for two reasons: Firstly, I believed that she could rise above the shadow of the Animorphs by brokering this peace agreement.” He looked at her. “That’s what I told you, and I meant every word. Your contribution to a lasting peace would have been incalculable.”

“Whatever,” Cassie said. Her face was like stone.

“The second reason,” Erek said, after a moment, “was that I wanted to find out what happened to Lourdes. Many of my people never forgave me for losing her… we have all been together a very long time.” His voice hardened. “I have felt her loss every day, and I would grieve for her until my core burns out. I did not believe I could save her, but I wanted to _know_ what happened.

“I thought it was possible, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the mysterious threat facing the Kelbrids might be the same one that had prevented Lourdes and the Animorphs from returning. Brokering peace with another race was absolutely within my programming. I could do good in the world, and I could find my answers.

“But — even for a Chee, security was tight,” he said. “I couldn’t get onto the peace mission unless Cassie brought me. And yes, I left some things out — but that’s why.”

“I get it,” Cassie said. “I’m still mad at you, but I get it.”

“So the two of you teamed up,” I said. “You were going to come out here with the Andalites, talk to some scary aliens and convince them to stand in a circle and sing kum-ba-yah… But that didn’t happen.”

“Nope,” Cassie said. She stood up.

“I’m hungry,” she said. “You hungry?”

I was more than hungry: I was _ravenous_.

* 

We were pretty limited in terms of food options, as much of the rations were designed for Andalite consumption. This apparently involved sticking a hoof inside kind of a TV dinner tray. The food was edible for humans, though, and Cassie had figured out if she dug the stuff out and blended it with water, she could make kind of a grassy milkshake. It sounded disgusting to me, but as soon as I took the first spoonful, I practically inhaled it.

I mean, yes, it tasted _terrible_ , but it was _food,_ and I was eating it because I was _alive_. I ate it so fast that there were green splotches on my chin.

Cassie grinned, and even Erek had the ghost of a smile. “What?” I said.

“You just remind me of Ax.”

“ _Oh thanks,”_ I wiped my face and made a concentrated effort to eat slower. _Food was SO good._

“We made it out here just fine,” Cassie said, resuming her story. “We took a small Dome ship. It had five fighter ships attached to it, and a few civilian vessels, like this one,” she motioned to the ship around us. “Entering Kelbrid space was exciting — we could see them waiting for us, it was all as expected. Everyone was energized, and I — I thought that bringing this kind of peace — “

She stopped, the words catching her throat.

“It started out okay,” Cassie said. “It was weird, but it was okay. The Kelbrids wouldn’t show themselves to us. They would send a transmission, and it would come pre-translated in the Andalite language. It annoyed the heck out of the Andalites, but we had a dialogue. They said they understood their secrecy must seem frustrating, but it had to be respected. Like I said — weird, but something we could concede to.

“I thought I would have to explain my presence,” Cassie said, “After all, they were here to make a deal with the Andalites. But they already knew my name.”

“How?”

“That’s a good question,” Erek said. “But the answer isn’t necessarily something nefarious. Unlike the Kelbrids, most alien species are quite loud with electromagnetic signals, radio, television, that kind of thing.” He shrugged. “It’s possible they picked it up, somewhere.”

“ _That_ freaked the Andalites out a little bit,” Cassie said. “But I told them to keep going, in good faith. They hadn’t done any spying the Andalites wouldn’t have done if they’d been able to.” She paused. “Now that I think of it, that’s probably why they were so ticked. They didn’t like knowing the Kelbrids were smarter than them.”

“So what happened?” I said.

Cassie’s shoulders sagged. “Erek’s theory was right. Something had invaded Kelbrid space and was causing a lot of problems. This part was hard to understand — it didn’t all translate well to Andalite, and like I said, they refused to let us hear any of their actual language.

“Hearing them describe it, I actually thought it might be the Yeerks at first,” Cassie said. “I know — that’s not possible, with the empire dissolved, and most of the species applying for a _nothlit_ program.” 

A little smile spread across her face. “They’re headed for extinction, in the best way possible…”

She blinked. “Sorry, that’s a whole other thing. The Kelbrids kept using words that didn’t carry over well: _assimilation, control_ , an _ugly union_. When I asked them how many Kelbrids had died, they got very emphatic, explaining that _no one_ had died, but they were _not the same_.”

She shook her head. “I know — it doesn’t make a lot of sense. I asked them what I thought was a simple question: How many enemies did they believe they were facing?

“‘ _Only one,’_ they told us. I repeated the question, because I thought they hadn’t understood me. But they were insistent on it: ‘ _There is only One enemy. The One.’”_

*

I closed my eyes and thought back to the place where I had been reborn, to the horrifying seconds after Lourdes’s finger touched my forehead. The way Ax’s face had split into a mouth filled with red-rimmed teeth, how the faces of Marco and Jake and Tobias had elongated and shifted and changed into a grey mass before melting together.

I wasn’t ready to talk about it.

*

“The Kelbrids said that whatever it was had established some kind of base on this planet,” Cassie said. “They’ve been bombing it, with little success.”

I remembered the way the walls had shaken around me, how alarms had occasionally blared. The Animorph- _things_ had blamed it on volcanic activity, but that jungle had sure seemed stable.

“Some success,” I said, dryly.

“They believed that a joint force — Andalite and Kelbrid, could succeed in wiping out the base. In exchange, they offered to swap technology, and a chance to open a dialogue permanently between Andalite and Kelbrid societies.

“That’s where we were at when the Dome Ship imploded.”

*

“What?” I said, shocked.

“It happened so fast,” Cassie said. “I’m not sure I could tell you exactly what happened when.”

“I can,” Erek said quietly. “I could play it back, if you’d like. We are capable of doing that.”

“Just — just tell me,” I said. I didn’t want to see that.

“We were attacked,” he said. And then he looked away. “Not by the Kelbrids… I’m sorry, I can’t. Cassie, please…”

I looked at her, baffled.

“It was Howlers, Rachel,” Cassie said quietly. “Their ships popped out of Zero space, and there were — hundreds of them.”

“I thought the Howlers were dead,” I said. A strange memory of robin’s egg-blue eyes on a distant planet fluttered through my mind.

“So did I,” Erek said. “It seems, like you, they are back. And they’re _stronger,_ somehow. We — they didn’t have a chance.”

“They moved so fast,” Cassie said. “They came out firing, and they were all over the Dome Ship. They fired something and it just — it just sort of crumpled into itself, that whole Dome, with everyone inside.

“Obviously, we weren’t in it — Erek and I were on this ship, the delegation to the Kelbrids. We were surrounded by Andalite fighters — they were the only reason we were able to escape,” she said. “That and Erek’s force fields.

“We took off,” Cassie said. “Orders from the Andalites. We made a beeline for this planet, as fast as we could. The Andalite fighters stayed with us and protected us.”

“Some Kelbrid ones did, too,” Erek said.

“Yeah — some Kelbrid ones did too,” Cassie acknowledged. “And they’re _fierce_ , you know that? I can see why the Andalites never wanted to mess with them. The Kelbrids took out more of the Howlers than the Andalites did, but there was just so many of them… little by little, they destroyed each other.

“We thought we were dead for sure,” Cassie said. “But then Erek did something smart.”

“Smart?” Erek snorted. “It wasn’t smart. It’s stranded us.”

“It saved our lives,” Cassie said. “He let the Howlers fire on us, just a glancing blow. You saw the damage from it when you came in. But when it hit, he threw up a hologram that showed our ship devastated and torn to shreds.”

“We stayed like that for a while,” Cassie said. “With everything going on… they missed us.”

Neither of them were looking at me, and it took me a few seconds to understand why.

“They weren’t all dead, were they?” I asked. “The Andalites and the Kelbrids protecting you — you let the Howlers murder them while you floated out there, waiting for a chance to get out.”

“Yeah,” Cassie said. “Yeah, we did.” She had begun to cry softly. “And I keep justifying it, because what could we have done? This is a recreational ship, for crying out loud… it’s an Andalite _minivan_. We just had to watch them die.”

There was a long pause as Cassie wept. I went to her side and put my arm around her shoulder. She leaned into me and cried into my hair.

“When it was all over, we flew away,” Cassie said. “We came here because we had nowhere else to go. But there’s nothing here, except a whole lot of volcanoes, a blown-up alien base and a tiny jungle. One jungle, on an _entire_ planet. It’s only a matter of time before we lose power, and then the days will get hotter and hotter, and we will _fry_ no matter where we are.

“So that’s why — even if we could save Jake and the others, why would we? They might even be better off than we are.” She shuddered against my shoulder. “We’re trapped.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For hardcore fans, by a hardcore fan.
> 
> Hope ya'll don't mind a longer chapter! Lots of words here, lots of anguish.
> 
> Also, I made a Twitter! Follow me if you'd like updates about this fic, including behind the scenes info, and incredibly nerdy musings about Animorphs. The social media is partly an experiment to learn how to brand myself, and partly an excuse to wax about all the old Animorphs books. 
> 
> @MdXWriter: https://twitter.com/MdxWriter 
> 
> Next chapter to be released Monday, Nov. 12, 9 p.m. ET.


	25. Dreams

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rachel is haunted by the person she once was.

**** For a while, we didn’t say anything. My brain felt exhausted, and why shouldn’t it? It was trying to wrap itself around all the things they had told me. The years after the war. The peril of the Animorphs. Cassie and Erek’s shell shock.

And it was still trying to think of a way out.

But nothing was coming to me. I was throwing anything I could into the fog inside my head, hoping something would come back. And some things did emerge, but often they were pieces of the horrible memories that Lourdes had tried to lock out.

Nights on this planet weren’t long, Erek explained, so we should rest if we were tired. He didn’t need to sleep, so he was staying at the bridge, watching the sky.

“What are you looking for?” I asked.

He pointed forward, and I saw the flickers in the sky, the same ones I had seen when I walked from the cave to the crystal.

“That’s debris from the battle entering the atmosphere,” he said quietly. “I’m watching for survivors.”

“Do you think there are some?”

“No, I don’t.”

*

Cassie brought me into what would have been an Andalite bedroom, which meant it was basically a wide horse stall with fuzzy walls. She had fashioned a kind of bed out of blankets in there, and with a little tweaking, she made a second one for me.

“Sorry we can’t give you your own room — there’s literally no other place that’s remotely cozy,” Cassie said.

“It’s okay,” I replied. “It’s like when we were kids, doing sleepovers.”

We laid down, and then I thought of something.

“Hey, Cassie?”

“Yeah?”

“How did you find me? Out there, on Ket.”

She rolled over and looked at me. “Ket?”

“This planet. It’s called Ket.”

“Oh,” she said. “It was the mountain. We saw it light up.”

“The — what?”

“I guess it wasn’t a mountain. That thing you were standing on. We saw it light up. It was incredible, like a giant Christmas tree.”

“The crystal?”

“Is that what it is? Yeah, I guess so. We were hovering there, in the atmosphere. We were _terrified,_ Rachel. We didn’t know what to do. We had nowhere to go. We knew we only had a little time before the sun rose, and we had to hide again.

“Then — there it was. This light in the dark, wrapping all the way up. And we went toward it, because it looked so… peaceful, I guess. Erek kept sending messages toward it, but nothing came back.

“We were about to leave when the sun started coming up. We were making one more pass around. That’s when we saw you, sitting there. I couldn’t believe it was really you. I thought — it had to be some trick, somehow, some Yeerk or Crayak thing.” She sighed. “I’m still not sure you aren’t. But you know what? I don’t care. I don’t care if you’re the real Rachel or a fake Rachel, because I’m going to die soon, and I’m just glad another human being is here with me.”

“It is the real me,” I whispered. “As much as I can tell, anyway.”

I reached out and squeezed her hand, and she smiled.

*

“Hey, Rachel?”

“Yeah?”

“How did you know this planet is called Ket? I didn’t know that. Erek didn’t know that. The Andalites didn’t know that.”

“The Ellimist told me.”

“Oh. Him.”

I told her what I remembered of his memories, which wasn’t much. He was born on this planet, I told her. He spent a very long time on a dead planet ruled by a sentient seaweed. I knew he had told me more than that, but by that point, I was too tired to remember all of it.

*

I drifted into a restless sleep, the first one of my new life.

*

I dreamed of killing.

I had claws and talons, and they were cutting and ripping. My head was filled with screams and roars — I couldn’t tell if it was me making the sounds. I moved through flesh like a boat through water. The blood rose until it covered my ankles and lapped at my knees. 

_It was wonderful._

I kicked with an elephant’s foot and crushed a thousand enemies beneath me. They cried out and slipped beneath the surface of the redness forever. Deeper I went into that sea, but was it because the floor was dropping or because the blood was rising? I couldn’t tell.

The waves were at my hips, against my chest, and then the blood was so high I couldn’t stand in it. I tipped my face, covered in the hair of a grizzly, toward the sky, while my elephant legs carried me forward. 

Elephants are excellent swimmers, but I barely floated. A storm appeared over me, and now the ocean sent waves crashing over my face. I knew the taste of blood, and it was in my mouth, my ears, my nose.

In the middle of this haze, I saw a piece of flotsam coming toward me, just a little piece of driftwood, bouncing on the waves. A rat sat on top of it, beady eyes watching me with fear. As it got closer, it stood on its hind legs.

My legs swirled desperately beneath the water, but I could do nothing except flail in the blood.

“What do you want?” I said, somehow speaking from my animal mouth. “You want me to say I’m sorry? Is that what you want?”

The rat looked at me and didn’t reply.

“I’m not sorry,” I sputtered, as blood ran down my chin. “I’m sad. But I’m not sorry.”

The rat blinked, and the little piece of driftwood sank without warning. The rat followed, vanishing beneath the waves in a second, like it never had been there.

“Wait,” I said, and then I went under too.

*

Down here, I could see the bodies of those I had killed. They were skewered on tendrils that rose from the ocean floor, tentacles of flora that wrapped and impaled Taxxons, Hork Bajir, humans, Yeerks. They floated around me, dozens of them, maybe hundreds of them

The plants held me, too. They wrapped around my chest, stretched into my mouth. I floated in the water, unable to move or breathe. The same thing that held my enemies, so also it held me.

_And I could feel them_.

They were part of me, inside my mind. I felt their anguish, I heard them crying out for their families, for freedom. They hadn’t known freedom for so long.

Something drifted in front of me — _it was Jake_! He was wrapped as tightly as any of them, but his eyes were open and begging me to help.

“I can’t,” I said. “I’m trapped. I can’t.”

He closed his eyes, and then he was being pulled away. All of those strange, floating dead things were retreating, and it terrified me. Being alone in this place was much more frightening than being with those I had murdered.

“Wait,” I said again, to no one.

I was moving upward, to the surface of the sea. It shimmered above. It was smooth now, like a mirror, and I could myself reflected in it.

But I was distorted — I wasn’t me. I had a long snout, tusks, talons for feet.

I was the Minotaur.

And as I watched myself, I saw that I was shifting and changing, with all the disgusting sounds of morphing bones and splitting skin played on full volume in my head. But I didn’t seem to be morphing _toward_ anything — I just became more monstrous every second. My tusks were larger and curled, my talons hooked and serrated, little sharp fangs growing on them. Every shift was an evolution toward the vicious. Every crackle of bone and sinew was a move toward a more efficient killer.

“No,” I cried out as I saw myself change.

My lips were turning neon green, and they parted into the smile of the Drode.

_They can’t protect you from your true nature,_ the thing in the mirror said to me. _That_ always _emerges._

I wanted to wake, wanted to bolt upright into a scream, but I couldn’t wake up, I couldn’t wake up. All I could do was watch myself change into a monster.

*

When I did opened my eyes, I just stared at the ceiling of the Andalite ship in silence. It was a relief not to see myself reflected back, as something inhuman and vicious, empty of thought besides _slash, slash, slash._

Was _that_ what I had become? My memories were loose now, and though they were incoherent, they were stitching themselves together, piece by piece. If I remembered the worst parts of the war, would I change again? Would I be… would I be that _thing?_

_That’s insane,_ I thought to myself. _You’re Rachel. Rachel, Naomi’s daughter, Jordan and Sara’s sister. Jake’s cousin. You aren’t a monster._

But I couldn’t stop thinking about the Minotaur. The Drode had made him that way on purpose, combining all the battle morphs from my DNA into a monster. It made sense, in a sick and cruel way; I was essentially under attack by the worst parts of myself, literally and mentally.

_Is it such a bad thing if — if she doesn’t remember all of it?_

Tobias had said that — no, not Tobias. The Tobias- _thing._

I sat up, lifting my knees to my chin.

I knew now why the Drode had forced my friends to lie to me. There had been no state funerals. There had been no “New Rachel” haircut. The falsehoods were so _obvious_ in hindsight. I had believed them because I wanted so badly to believe them. To disbelieve them would mean I would have to accept that my death was meaningless. I hadn’t been ready for that. 

Jake had stumbled and stuttered when he lied to me, and I thought he was just emotional, but now I saw that he must have been fighting the Drode for every word. Keeping the truth from me was a sadistic cruelty to Jake that must have pleased the Drode to no end. How could it have passed the chance to remind them of all their failings and regrets? The thought made me sick.

*

_What if they lied on purpose?_

The thought shot through my brain like a lightning bolt.

Tobias had lied. He told me he reunited with his mother. He said they bought a house. He said they went flying together. And when he said it, his voice hadn’t shaken, and he had stared at me clearly and calmly. He had been _lying_ through his teeth, and he had done it on purpose — but the Drode couldn’t have told a lie as delicate as that. It was obvious when I compared it to Jake’s hyperbolic exaggerations. Tobias’s lie was beautiful — it would have come from _him._ It would have been something he’d wished was true. It would have been something he’d regretted.

My love for Tobias, and my sadness at his plight, washed through me for a second, but something in my head pushed it away. 

I was missing something.

Tobias had told a fragile lie, but it had been _his_ lie. It had been his words, unscripted. It had slipped past the thing controlling him, probably because the Drode hadn’t deemed it important enough to tip me off, and would have delighted in Tobias’s pain.

But if Tobias’s words _had_ been his own, it meant that the others might have had other uncontrolled moments… _and they might have passed me a message in them!_

I stood up, pushing the blankets away. Cassie was fast asleep. I stepped into the small corridor outside our bedroom and began to pace, muttering to myself as I did.

“ _What did they say?”_ I thought it would be easier to remember something from only a few hours before, but it had been an awful beginning to my second life, and monsters kept cropping up in the fog.

Jake talked the most about _after the war._ He talked for a long time — if anyone would have had the opportunity to leave a message, it would have been him. _But what?_ I pored over as much of it in my mind as I could, but all of it sounded so ludicrous now. Where had he looked the most frightened? The most under attack? The most _unlike_ Jake as I’d ever seen him?

His face popped into my head, plastered with a manic, insane grin: _All the Yeerks are dead. Every single one._

That was an obvious, bald-faced lie, and I was furious that I hadn’t seen it on the spot. For all the evil we had done, and the thousands of Yeerks Jake had murdered in the moments before my death, he wasn’t really a killer. For him, the war was simple strategy.

I had been the killer.

He had known that, and in time, I had known it too. He used me for it, and I let him do it, same as the Chee used us to do the things they couldn’t do. 

I would have killed the Yeerks. I would have squashed every single one under a grizzly paw if I could have. 

It just so happened that they killed me first.

*

I shook my head. _Keep looking._

“Jake wouldn’t have killed them all,” I muttered. “No one would have gotten away with that, not even me. They put Visser Three in a _prison_ , for God’s sake.”

It had been a _hell_ of a lie, but Jake hadn’t stuttered when he said it, and he hadn’t looked upset. He had looked _thrilled,_ like he’d discovered something, and maybe he had. 

The more I thought about it, the more I thought that if Jake were going to try to tell me something, it would have been then. He’d told a whopper, but like Tobias, _it had been his own_.

“What else did he say?” I grumbled, walking faster. “Come _on_ , Rachel.”

_Rachel._

_We like to hang out together on the Rachel when she’s docked._

*

The words thrummed into my brain and stuck there. _Why did they matter?_ There was a connection here — there was something important and I almost had it. But I needed help, so I went back to the bedroom and I woke Cassie up.

She woke instantly as soon as I touched her, wolf fur already sprouting from her face. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing — Jake — the thing that was Jake — he said there was a ship named after me. The _U.S.S. Rachel_. Is that true?”

“W - what?”

“Did they name a boat after me?”

“No — no, I don’t think so. I never heard of it, if they did.”

“Jake _said_ you all spent time there. He was _lying._ But that lie doesn’t matter. It wouldn’t have hurt him, and he wouldn’t have wished it were true, like Tobias wished his lie was true.”

“What are you talking about?”

But I was thinking too fast now. “I can see why that would have slipped through — but why tell it? He had to be pointing me to something, he had to be showing me…”

I cried out, pain shooting down my chest. In the midst of my focus, I had reached up and scratched right across where the Minotaur had cut me.

Cassie sprang to her feet. “Let’s not leave that open. Come on.” She started to leave the room, but she paused when she saw I wasn’t following. “Rachel?”

I was staring at the blood in my hand. The blood that had been drawn by the Minotaur. Back at that lab, it had _cut_ me. It had reached out and slashed as I tried to escape, and it had darn near killed me on the spot.

But on the Equatorial High Crystal — it had been barely more than a ghost, a projection, a hologram. It had been there to terrorize me, to drive me over a cliff. Eventually, it had failed and vanished, because it had been back at the facility the entire time.

_The entire time…_

“Cassie!” I shouted, and she actually jumped. “I’ve got it! I figured it out!”

“W - what?”

“There’s a ship,” I said excitedly. “Back at the lab. It’s named after me. We’re going to find it, find Lourdes, save the Animorphs — and then we’re going to get the hell off of Ket.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For hardcore fans, by hardcore fans.
> 
> Hope ya'll don't mind the longer chapters!
> 
> Next chapter to be released Wednesday, Nov. 14 at 9 p.m. ET.
> 
> And if you'd like, follow me on Twitter! @MdxWriter.


	26. The Plan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rachel returns to the mysterious place where she was brought back to life.

**** “There’s a ship. It’s called the _Rachel_ , and it’s where the Drode was keeping the Minotaur,” I told Erek and Cassie. “The Drode showed it to me — it was when he first showed up, right before Lourdes scrambled my brain. He was trying to mess with me — to scare me. And it worked — but he let something slip he shouldn’t have.”

“You’re talking really fast,” Cassie said.

“ _There’s a ship!_ That’s what Jake was trying to tell me — _he’s still alive, Cassie!_ ”

She was looking at Erek. “They _were_ supposed to have hijacked an experimental Yeerk vessel, modified by the Andalites. Is it possible it’s still there?”

“We’re standing on a spaceship on a dead planet, next to a present-day Lazarus, and you can turn into an owl,” Erek said dryly. “I would say that yes, it is possible.”

“We can go there — as soon as the sun sets, _let’s go!”_

“Yes, I think we should,” Erek said slowly.

“Why are you so hesitant?” Cassie asked. “If Rachel is right, this is our best chance. Do you have a better plan?”

“No,” Erek said. He looked almost bored. “I agree, this is our best chance, but that doesn’t make it a good one. Even if we find the _Rachel_ , and by some miracle it can still fly, I’m not sure we’ll be getting away from here.”

“Why not?” I was so excited, I was almost angry. “Jake wouldn’t have told us about the ship unless we had a shot. He risked everything to get even that little bit out.”

“Because you’ve said something much more disturbing than us being trapped on the planet,” Erek said, and I realized I had misread his emotions — he wasn’t bored, he was _terrified._ “You said — ‘Crayak is coming’ — that’s what the Drode told you, multiple times.”

“Yeah,” I said. “He was sure of that — his whole psycho Death Star is on its way.”

“That explains the Howlers, _”_ Erek said. “They’re his advance wave, here to scorch and burn. But _why_ is he coming? Besides us, there’s nothing alive to _kill_.” He was tapping a finger so hard against the wall that I saw it dent slightly. “I want to see what else is in this place they made you in, Rachel. We are missing some critical knowledge, and I fear that what we don’t know will kill us. We are ants to Crayak — “

“Not ants,” Cassie and I both said, in unison.

“— something insignificant, then. Maybe — a pile of rocks, rolled around by wind. Crayak is the ocean, and when he comes, he’ll crash down and tear us apart. Like he tore apart the Pemalites.” 

His tapping finger tore through the metal, snapping him out of it.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I just… I don’t remember when I’ve ever been more afraid.”

*

While we waited for the sun to set, Erek showed me what little he knew of Ket. The Andalites had scanned the planet, viewing it as a potential rendezvous point if the meeting with the Ketrans went awry. 

The whole place was a scattered wasteland of volcanic rock and lava tubes. The jungle I had walked through — the only one on the entire planet, he was pretty sure — had formed for two purely coincidental reasons. Firstly, it had been in a shallow region of lesser geologic activity, and secondly, it had been tucked between the enormous Equatorial High Crystal and a mountainous region. Erek thought it was possible there had been more plant life in the past, but it had all eventually subsided into this tiny location, retaining some degree of protection. All in all, it was only ten square miles of vegetation.

The mountains, Erek explained, were on the edge of some _highly_ active geology, a magma pool stretching for miles under the surface, maybe to the core of the planet. The mountains were rock forced up into something that was probably barely stable, and that was where the Drode had built the facility where I had been resuscitated. The Kelbrids had aggressively bombed the site, but Erek was pretty sure that one specific structure built into the mountain on the volcanic side was some kind of a hangar bay, where we might be able to gain entry.

And… besides what I had seen inside, that was all we really knew.

*

“Tell us more about the monster,” Cassie said, for the third time.

“It’s the size of grizzly bear, it moves fast and has the talons of an eagle,” I said. “It’s mean.”

She was thinking. “I don’t know that I have any morph that can take that. Cheetah? Polar bear, maybe…”

Involuntarily, I shuddered.

“Oh. Right,” she said quickly. “A wolf would be better, anyway. From what you’ve said, I don’t think I could take it on, but a wolf can do a little damage and then get out of there. It’s you I’m more worried about.”

I flashed her my biggest: _Who, me?_ smile. “I’ve got a gun,” I said, holding up the Andalite shredder Erek had given me. “That’s all I need.”

“Do you even know how to use that thing?”

“Can’t be that hard. Point, _blam_ _blam_ , right?”

“Shredders have some recoil, if you aren’t used to it,” Erek said.

“I can handle it,” I said.

“So this is the plan: we land, we stay together,” Cassie said. “I’ll be a wolf, and we’ll just try to move as fast as we can.” She sighed. “I wish we knew _a little_ more about this place.”

*

We emerged from the cave, the horizon a bloody color. Erek brought us toward the crystal, and as soon as we moved out of the cavern, I could feel the ship heat by several degrees. Ket was no place for a nice stroll.

Erek piloted the ship around the edge of the mountain range. The line where the jungle met the volcanic waste was stark; trees just ceased to grow. A grey road, maybe a spur of the same one I had travelled the day before, continued into the black plains before it vanished into rock.

“I imagine that jungle once went much further,” Erek said. “It’s not a really a surprise it exists — the atmosphere is cool enough to retain clouds for rain, and the soil would be rich from ash. It’s a shame the surface is so hot.”

“The sky was always where it was at,” I said, thinking of the Ellimist. I had already brought him up to speed on what I remembered of Toomin’s memories.

“I wish I could have seen that,” he said, sounding wistful. “I cannot imagine those crystals in the sky — what a sight it must have been.”

Cassie was peering outside the cockpit window, and as we came over the mountain, she pointed. “That’s it,” she said. “It’s torn up — but look — there’s the hangar doors, see?”

I squinted. In the evening light, it was hard to make out where the parts of the facility that hadn’t been blasted by the Kelbrids. Smoke still drifted up from jagged cuts in the rock, but I could see a flatter place where Cassie was pointing — a landing strip.

“Okay,” Erek said. “Bringing it around… Let’s be ready. This place might have had a defense system. The Kelbrids _probably_ blew it all up, but — “

_PSEEWWW!_

Erek reacted, sending us hurtling to the left. Cassie and I were seated and secured, but I heard a _thwack_ as she smacked her elbow, and she swore loudly.

_PSEWW! PSEWW! PSEWW!_

The inside of the Andalite ship was filled with an intense red glow, flashing like bursts of lightning. We dove downward until and the mountain took up the entire viewport window. I saw the source of the burst: giant, snapping lasers that came from cannons affixed somewhere in the hills. Something was wrong with them, however; their aim was dramatically off, most of them missing us by a considerable distance.

“Bringing us down!” Erek shouted. “This is going to be rough — “ 

I felt us make impact, and then I was flying through the air.

_At least the thermals will be nice,_ I thought, before I blacked out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For hardcore fans, by a hardcore fan.
> 
> Next chapter to be released Friday, Nov. 16 at 9 p.m. ET.
> 
> Also, it's my birthday, so have some cake.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	27. Found Footage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rachel learns what really happened after the Animorphs encountered the Blade Ship.

“RACHEL! _Oh, not again, please not again…_ ”

“She’s breathing — get out of the way.”

I was rising, being scooped up. I was aware of everything, but it was all so dim and faded. Red lights were glowing, flashing. I was _moving_.

“Hey…” I mumbled.

“She’s talking — Erek, set her down — “

“Once we get inside,” Erek said in a no-nonsense tone. “Cassie, _will you please move?”_

“Right! Sorry…”

Suddenly everything was very quiet, and I could see Erek’s mechanical face above mine. Cassie was there too, looking terrified.

Erek lifted his hand, and a little white light appeared on the end of his pointer finger. He traced it from side to side. I squinted, because it was so bright.

“What is your name?” He said.

“Rachel,” I grumbled. “Get your hand out of my face.”

“ _Oh my God,”_ Cassie said, and then she lunged forward, embracing me. “I thought for sure you were dead. I was _sure.”_

“I’m fine,” I said, pushing her away. I tried to sit up, and a whole bunch of woozy stars went passed my eyes. “Okay well. I’m not _fine_ fine, but give me a minute. What happened?”

“We got hit,” Erek said. “It was a glancing blow, or we wouldn’t be alive. And — and this I apologize for — we went down hard. You and Cassie were thrown out of the ship.”

“I was _impaled_ ,” Cassie said. I looked at her, and saw her touching her chest, laughing. “Right here! It was right here! If I couldn’t morph, I’d be dead right now!” She laughed again, so hard that tears were running down her face.

“Hey Cassie,” I said. “Chill out.”

“I remembered you couldn’t morph, and I thought — I was sure — “

“I’ll scan her,” Erek said. One of his fingers split into two pieces, and a small grid of red lights ran up and down my torso. “Vital signs are fine. She’s shaken — probably a concussion, and I’m afraid we may need to redress your wound at some point — but she is in no danger, Cassie.”

“Oh, good,” Cassie said. Her laughter was diminishing, and she seemed to be more composed. “ _Jesus._ Did we really do this kind of thing all the time on Earth? Because it _sucks.”_ She walked away, shaking her head. “I need a minute.” She walked away, pacing slowly.

I turned back to Erek and looked at his hand, still sending a glowing pattern over me. “You can tell all that about me from the lights on your hand? That’s like some _Star Trek_ crap. How come you didn’t use it when I first came on board?”

“Oh,” Erek said. “No, I only said that to calm her down. This is just a laser pointer system.” He shrugged. “It’s use it to mess with cats.”

I snorted, then I remembered why we were here. “Did we get where we needed to go?”

“We are inside the hangar, yes,” Erek said.

“And is she — is she here?”

He pointed behind me. I turned, and there was the ship I had seen: sharpened curves, bending around like a boomerang. One of the curves had been shredded to pieces, but on the other, an evil-looking Dracon cannon still looked ready for action. The writing on the side was still legible.

This was _The Rachel._ It looked vicious, and beautiful, and dangerous.

I _loved_ it.

*

“Can it fly?” I asked Erek.

We were inside; the interior was in rough shape. All of the cushions had been shredded by the Minotaur, and many of the knobs and dials for piloting were broken. Plus, nearly everything was coated in a nasty, brackish goo.

“I’m trying to find that out now, but — the damage does appear to be mostly cosmetic,” Erek said. He nodded toward the shredded wing. “That could be a problem, but I’m not sure it’s a dealbreaker.” He was removing a control panel and plucking at wires. “What I’m really concerned about is — “

Something thrummed beneath his hands, and then a million dials inside of the ship lit up, even the ones hanging from the ceiling.

A wry grin spread across his face. “ — if she’s fueled up. And she _is_. _Rachel_ is alive and kicking!”

“Of course she is,” I said, and maybe for the first time of my new life, I breathed a real sigh of relief. “And she’s going to get us home. _”_

*

We had our ship, now we needed our people.

At the end of the hangar was a large door that looked sealed shut, but it was like a paper towel in Erek’s super android strength. Behind it was a long, dark corridor that looked identical the ones I had briefly walked though shortly after my resurrection.

I was fired up and ready to kick butt. I wanted to go deeper into the building right now, guns blazing. If the halls had been wide enough, I would’ve flown the _Rachel_ straight through, Dracon-zapping any enemy to nothing. 

Erek was more cautious, and although it took some convincing, he got me to agree to a more subdued plan. He first wanted to look through the ship’s logs, because maybe there would be a clue as to what we were up against. So Cassie and I sat down beside him while he played the final moments of the _Rachel._

*

“ _Ram the Blade Ship.”_

“They _didn’t!_ ” Cassie said. “ _That_ was Jake’s big plan?! What was that supposed to do? That thing literally _just told them_ it wasn’t just one ship! They should have tried to negotiate — ”

“They kind of did,” I pointed out. “But they would have had to be taken in by that thing — what did the Yeerk call it? _The One.”_

“I bet you _anything_ that’s what the Kelbrids were so afraid of,” Cassie said. “That’s why they couldn’t tell us how many they’d lost to it — the Kelbrids were.. _fused_ into it, somehow, like the Yeerk captain was.” She furrowed her eyebrow. “But he was still there, wasn’t he? The Yeerk captain was _talking_ to them. He said that stuff about having to ‘invoke’ his master. So there’s some wiggle room there.”

“What I can’t believe is that they told everyone they were from the _Starship Enterprise,”_ I said. “Those idiots. Did they forget they painted my name on the side? Or that there would be Yeerks on the Blade Ship who had seen Star Trek? _Idiots._ ”

“They did _not_ do well without us,” Cassie agreed.

“If you’re both finished, I would like to see what happens next,” Erek said politely.

“Oh,” I said. Cassie and I both leaned forward. “Sorry, go ahead.”

*

They rammed the Blade Ship.

Well — they curled the _Rachel_ at the last second, for maximum slicing and dicing. That was why our left boomerang blade was nearly ribbons. We were able to follow the audio until everyone who could morph did morph. That seemed to be everyone except for the pilot, a scrawny fellow Marco called _Menderash_. Jake yelled orders until his face bulged out into a proboscis and he vanished into an insect morph. The thinking was that the smaller they were, the more likely they were to survive the impact and board the Blade Ship.

The _Rachel_ hadn’t recorded thought-speak, so once Jake and company turned into bugs, we only had Menderash’s responses to go off of. Weird thing was, though — the dude didn’t speak. He seemed intently _focused_ , for sure, but he wasn’t calling out any instructions to the Animorphs, like I had expected.

The impact was strange to watch, because of the stationary camera. Menderash had his mouth open, screaming (the only sound he made the entire video) and then he was jolted forward and the camera tipped slightly as a crunching, grinding and roaring sound filled the audio. His body dropped forward, and thought for sure he was dead, but a few seconds later, he lifted his head and pressed a dial near his right hand. We heard another wrenching, tearing sound, and his body jerked to the left.

_“There!”_ Erek said, pointing to the edge of the screen.

At the edge of the screen, barely visible, five cockroaches scuttled forward, out of the frame.

_“_ They made it,” Cassie breathed. “At least — at least for a little bit.”

We saw quickly that Menderash wasn’t going to be so lucky. He appeared to be gasping for air, grabbing at his throat, and choking. This went on for several seconds, and I was about to tell Erek to turn it off when he did it on his own.

“That wasn’t as helpful as I’d hoped,” he said after a few minutes. “They crashed — and the Animorphs — at least some of them — made it to the Blade Ship. But Menderash suffocated — the cabin must have been compromised.”

He furrowed his eyebrows, studying the screen closely. “That could be a problem when we try to leave the atmosphere.”

“What happened to Menderash?” Cassie wondered. Erek and I both looked at her like she was crazy — it was obvious he’d been killed.

“No, I mean — there’s his body, right there,” she pointed at the screen. “And he was sitting about where you are now, Rachel.” (I shuffled uncomfortably at the thought). “But he’s not here now, and there aren’t any remains — fast forward, Erek.”

The scene zipped by, and Menderash didn’t move for a long time. And then, from the top of the frame, something slid into view. A tendril, wispy, almost tentative. It touched Menderash’s face, which by now had ice crystals on it. It slipped up around his cheeks and over his shoulders, expanding as more and more of it gripped him.

“What _is_ that?” Cassie whispered.

The thing gripped him more completely, and then the very first part of it rose into the air. It hovered like that, for a few seconds, as if watching Menderash, assessing him.

Then it _stabbed_ into his chest!

His body jerked and shuddered —  _and his eyes moved on their own._ An expression of terror drifted across his face, and his mouth opened into a silent scream.

The camera cut out. Erek rewound it, played the last few terrifying seconds, but there was nothing else.

*

_“_ So we just don’t let this thing get near us,” I said. “Easy, I wasn’t planning to.”

“But he was dead — he was _dead_ ,” Cassie was saying. “He suffocated, and then he died. And then he sat there for what? Forty-five minutes?”

“Just more than an hour,” Erek said.

“But he woke up — right at the end, _he woke up!_ ”

“Guys,” I said. “Does it… does this _matter?_ I wasn’t planning to let this thing — _The One_ — get close to me. It doesn’t change the mission — we need to get in, get the Animorphs, and get out.”

“ _Jesus_ ,” Cassie said. Her voice had a tone I remembered. Her voice had a tone I _hated_. “You’re actually enjoying this, aren’t you? Rachel the soldier — back on a mission, with something to fight for.”

“I’m willing to fight to _save my friends,”_ I snapped. “Is that so terrible?”

“No,” she said. “But we might be facing something that _literally_ raises the dead, and you’re just — you’re just glad to have something to shoot at.”

“Yes!” I exclaimed. “I am! Every minute since I’ve been back, I haven’t been able to tell what’s real and what isn’t, what’s trying to help me, and what’s trying to kill me.” I pointed at the Menderash’s terrified expression, at the cruel tentacle impaling his chest. “But I know that that’s bad. I know it wants to _kill_ us. No one’s going to be sad when I kill it first.”

“What if The One doesn’t try to kill us?” Erek said. “I believe this is what concerns Cassie, more than your attitude toward it.”

“Yeah,” Cassie said. “Look — I — I don’t want to die, but at this point, if it happens, it happens. I’m glad I made it this far, okay? Even with the war. Even with all we did — I’m glad to be alive. I _want_ to be alive. It took me a long time to understand what that means – what it really means.”

She took a deep breath, exhaled it through her nose. “But if I die — I want to be dead, okay? I don’t want — whatever that thing is doing — “ she pointed at the screen. She couldn’t even look at it. “If die — you make sure I stay dead. You understand, Rachel?”

“What?” I asked, shocked.

“I don’t want… _that…_ done to me,” she was twisting her head back and forth.

“Okay, Cassie… okay. I’m not going to let that happen,” I said. “Don’t give up on them yet. I _saw_ Tobias, and Marco, and all of them — we’re going to get them. I promise.”

She nodded her head slowly. “I’m sorry, you’re right. I just — _Jesus_ , that thing is scary. I do want to get them. I want to see Jake again. I want to see Ax again. I don’t care what we have to do — I want to get them out.”

“That’s my girl,” I said, then I grinned at her.

Cassie rolled her eyes. “Go ahead, say it.”

“Nah,” I said. “You should try it. It feels good.”

She nodded, then inhaled.

“Let’s do it,” she said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter to be posted Sunday, Nov. 18 at 9 p.m. ET.


	28. The Warehouse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rachel makes a disturbing discovery.

Erek found what he was looking for just inside the hangar door: a terminal he could access, and a map of the facility. That seemed great at first, but it was much larger than he had anticipated, and I’d literally been thrown out with the trash on my last exit. I didn’t exactly know how to get back to where I had last seen Lourdes and the Animorphs.

“Here,” he said finally, pointing to a nondescript rectangle on the map. “This is one of the decantation rooms. But it’s been flagged in the database for some reason.”

“What’s the flag?” Cassie asked.

“ _Do not enter.”_

“That sounds promising,” I muttered. “ _Abandon hope, all ye who enter here!”_

*

Cassie morphed into a wolf, and I kept my shredder ready. Erek moved between us. He tried to project a hologram, but it kept flickering — apparently, his projection system had been severely depleted above the atmosphere, and it hadn’t yet had time to fully recharge. I finally asked him to turn it off, and he did.

The facility, as far as well could tell, was deserted. The room after the hangar was a long, narrow corridor with empty walls, scattered by debris. My mind kept shifting back to the dudes in hazmat suits — where were they?

“Do we have any idea what they used this place for?” I asked Erek. “Besides — uh, making me.”

“Some kind of… storage,” Erek said. “I’m not sure about that. But the schematics were larger than I had expected, viewing it from the outside. It goes down deeper than I thought it would.”

“They said they needed the energy,” I remembered. “Something about how the process of building my body, I think.”

Erek was nodding slowly. “I suppose that’s true. But that doesn’t really account for the sheer amount of square footage on the surface, does it? They wouldn’t need much space for a laboratory, and the energy harvesters would be below the surface, anyway.”

We came to another door, larger than the one previous. It was massive, and closed, and I thought for sure we would need Erek’s robot strength to open it. But as we approached, it slid open smoothly, without grinding at all, automatically. The lights even came on by themselves, too.

They showed something from hell

*

The aliens that hung from the ceiling were all connected.

Hork-Bajir, Taxxons, Andalite, Gedds — even a few humans were up there. There were hundreds of them, lined up in careful rows that stretched all the way to the back of the room. They were held in translucent pods, each one illuminated slightly from the inside by something we couldn’t see.

_“Oh my God,”_ Cassie whispered.

Near the front, I saw something both terrifying and familiar: a hulking black body, with rippled arms cut through by a molten shimmer. Small, robin’s egg-blue eyes sat on top of its head.

“ _Super Howlers_ ,” I breathed, because this was surely larger, and scarier than the creatures I remembered from our time on Iskoort.

They were all utterly, completely, perfectly still. None of them moved. None of them breathed. They seemed to be suspended in some kind of liquid, and a dark, menacing strand flowed between them, almost like a long cord, weaving them together.

But this wasn’t a cord — it was misshapen, and it very slightly, almost delicately, _quivered._ It ran over and between the pods — it was _feeding_ them.

A disturbing thought crossed my mind: _Was this how my body had been created?_ Had I been grown in one of these pods, an empty husk, my hair floating in the muck? I shuddered.

“Erek… what is this?” Cassie asked.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Erek said. He sounded “This information was not included in any of the intelligence reports. I was not expecting this.”

“What intelligence?” I asked.

His pause lasted a little too long. “The Andalites gathered as much intelligence about this area as they could — I would have expected this to be part of the information. It was not.”

“Are they — _are they alive?_ ” Cassie said. “I don’t know if they’re prisoners, or some sick science experiment. They aren’t even breathing.”

“Let’s keep moving,” I said. I was watching Erek very closely, but it was hard to read a robot. He was studying the room thoroughly, spending several seconds lingering over the rows and rows of bodies. “If we can help them, we will. I don’t know how, but we will.”

She nodded. “Yeah… let’s keep going. _Geez_ , this is creepy. I wonder how many there are.”

“If the rows go all the way to the back, and all the way down, there are seven hundred and twenty eight,” Erek said.

_Was I one of them?_ I wondered as we walked along, to the back of the room, under those silent creatures, beneath the pulsing, undulating cord.

*

Over the next fifteen minutes, we found huge amounts of computer machinery, a massive wall of lights and dials and small readouts. There were also plenty of fans running at high speed, somewhere in the bowels of the building; the further we got in, the more I noticed their thrumming. We passed through featureless halls, none with windows, all lit by that same harsh, fluorescent glow. The place was banged up; often, portions of the ceiling had fallen to the floor, and brackish slime was occasionally smeared across the walls.

“There aren’t any cafeterias,” Cassie said suddenly. “There’s no — what’s the word? — Infrastructure. This place doesn’t have any infrastructure. There’s no places to eat, there aren’t any gymnasiums. I haven’t even seen a bathroom.”

“What are you thinking?” I asked her.

“The people we saw out there — the ones in the tubes. I don’t think they’re supposed to come _out_ of them,” she said. “I’m thinking this place is sort of a warehouse for them. They stay here until… something.”

“Yes, I think you are correct,” Erek said. We were about to enter a new room, one with a more open floor plan, a mezzanine overlooking a lower story. “I was thinking they might be some kind of private army. But it doesn’t seem to be useful to have a ground force on Ket — there’s very little to defend. And there doesn’t seem to be a way to transport — “

I suddenly dropped into a defensive crouch, raising my gun and motioning for Cassie and Erek to freeze.

Inside the room, a woman was standing with her back to us.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For hardcore fans, by a hardcore fan.
> 
> The next chapter comes out Tuesday, Nov. 20, at 9 p.m. ET.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	29. Jeanne Girard

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rachel rises to meet a threat.

**** She was leaning against the wall, and she had her back to us. She wore a soldier’s uniform, but it was wrinkled and dirty. She had long, dark brown hair that was knotted up. Her body shook when she heard us enter, just the slightest quiver in response to our sound, but she didn’t turn around.

I had my shredder ready, just in case. I turned to Cassie.

“Hey,” I whispered. “How good are your diplomat skills? I have your back if she does anything.”

“Right,” Cassie whispered. She took a step forward. “Hi — hello. My name is Cassie. I’m from Earth. I want to help you. What is your name?”

The woman made a sound, a long, sad sigh, a great exhalation of air. “ _Ahhhhhh.”_ She turned, slowly, to face us. I tightened my finger on the trigger, expecting an attack — but she only looked at us, expressionless, ice cold. Under the grime, she was probably beautiful — she had high, delicate cheekbones, a small nose and a small, pointed chin. With some foundation and the right makeup, the girl could probably pull off a killer smokey eye.

She looked drained somehow. Her shoulders were hunched, and her elbows stuck out at strange angles. Her jaw hung loosely open.

I stared at her face for a few seconds before it hit me.

This woman was dead.

*

“Jeanne Girard,” Erek said suddenly. “You were one of Jake’s students. You were with him when they rammed the Blade Ship.”

The woman rolled her head back — was she trying to nod? She was trying to speak, that was obvious. But she was uncoordinated. She could move her mouth, but only silently. Or she could make sounds, but would forget to move her mouth, so it would come out like some weak, horrible moans.

“Take your time,” Cassie said. “We don’t want to hurt you. If you know our friends, we want to help you.”

“ _Help…”_ the woman said, turning the word over in her mouth, concentrating on it. “ _I_ … _am_ … _beyond_ … _help_ …”

“Okay,” Cassie said. “But we want to do what we can. Can you tell us what happened to you? What happened after you boarded the Blade Ship?”

“ _The One_ …” she whispered. She lifted her hands front of her face, and stared at them wonderingly. “It killed me. They had no use. I’m dead now.” She looked up at me wonderingly. “Are you dead, too?”

Her question caught me off guard. “I was,” I said. “But I’m alive now.”

She nodded solemnly. “The One keeps my mind alive. That’s how it keeps us. We can’t leave. We’re prisoners. It had no use for me, or for Santorelli. But he was hurt. You can’t be revived without a complete mind. I don’t know what happened to him.”

I remembered the man in the caverns below this place, the one with the uniform who bore the name Jeanne had spoken.

“He’s gone,” I said. “He — he’s truly dead.”

“ _Good_ ,” Jeanne made a small, satisfied sigh, then seemed to have trouble speaking again. I realized that she had forgotten to inhale. Was that the source of her struggles to speak — she was forgetting to breathe?

“Where is The One now?” Erek asked.

“It is all here, now,” Jeanne said sadly. “I cannot exist without it. It connects me to the others, although you can’t see it. Quantum entanglement, I think. Once you have been drawn into The One, you are of it, wherever you are. In the skies, in the sea, in the Earth… you are in service to The One. It is the master. All resist in the beginning, but most come to worship it.” She smiled suddenly, a whisper of defiance. “Not me. I never stopped resisting, even after it killed me.”

*

Something was shifting in the back of my mind.

It had been drifting there for a while, I realized — ever since the Animorphs had dissolved into that horrifying thing, their flesh moving like water and their faces like sand down a mountain. There was another box in my mind, one I had barely thought about, but from which clues had been slipping out, little by little, into the darkest corners of my thoughts and dreams. This box was labelled _Ellimist Memories After Ket_ , and I could sense that most of them were terrible.

Something crawled out of that box now, a memory of floating, and of being held prisoner. On the Andalite ship, I had dreamed of being suspended in an ocean of blood, held down by tendrils of some vast flora, creeping across my eyes, into my mouth. It stretched beyond me, it touched all my enemies, all my friends. I felt all their pain in a great web of interconnectedness.

Looking into Jeanne’s eyes, and hearing her words, I knew that the full truth about The One lay not in her past, or in mine, but in Toomin’s.

*

“You said The One is here,” Erek said. “Is it going to try and take us?”

“It can’t, right now,” Jeanne said. “It sleeps. You saw it? It hangs from the ceilings.”

_The bodies_ , I thought, remembering that undulating, pulsing black cord.

“It must be _invoked_ to draw its true form. But even without it, it takes only a touch to be recanted. You don’t even need to be alive to be taken.”

“Oh my God,” I said. “So you really are dead. You’re like a zombie.”

“No — she still has her mind,” Erek said. “That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it Jeanne? Your body is dead, but your mind is alive, but only until — until _The One_ lets you go.”

“ _Oui_ ,” Jeanne whispered.

“When will that happen?”

She shrugged her shoulders slightly. “It will never let me go. But I have not been recanted, like the rest of it. Decanted, this body will only survive another day. The One released me with the other Animorphs, but it did not put me back.”

“The tubes!” Cassie said. “If we put you in there — you’ll live?”

“Not an option,” I whispered. “We can’t risk waking it up.”

“There must be something we can do,” Cassie insisted. “Take her with us, get her help. We can’t just leave her!”

*

I closed my eyes and reached deep into memories. I went to a planet that had no name, where a particular breed of sea sponge had learned to think for itself, and slowly annihilated anything it could bind to. I searched for its name first, because, as I had learned with myself, and with _David_ , knowing a name gave you a particular sort of power over a thing.

_“Father,”_ I whispered. The box opened, and I saw it all — the miles of ocean. The decades ( _centuries_?) of games that Toomin played against a creature seemingly without limit. _Father_ was the strangest alien I ever learned about as an Animorph, and _that_ was saying something.

But Father had been nothing more than a small clump of cells that gained sentience, became adept at interfacing (and overtaking) neural networks. The Ellimist had finally defeated him by applying the complexities of his own mind to cut him off from his victims.

I took a step forward, my mind filling with Toomin’s last days against Father. I felt Toomin respond to the sight of Jeanne. It was almost like being inside an animal mind, but in reverse — the animal mind inside me was from Toomin’s experiences, and it knew how to handle a being like Jeanne.

“What are you doing?” Cassie asked as I raised my arm.

“Playing a game _,”_ I said, and I took the hand of Jeanne Gerard.

*

Physically, Jeanne’s hand dissolved into a dark flesh — the same color of the cord that connected the bodies dangling in the atrium. It split into a hundred tendrils and wove around my finger tips, wrapping up my forearm, around my elbow. That wasn’t pleasant, but, more frighteningly: I felt it come for my mind.

I felt it snake up, probing the edge of my consciousness. If it had been just me, with only my memories as an Animorph, I wouldn’t have stood a chance. It would have linked with me, entrapped me, and I would have been part of it just as Menderash had been. But Toomin’s mind rose to meet it with the ferocity of a predator. How many times had Toomin plucked Father’s victims away from him? Thousands? _Millions?_ It was engrained in him, a muscle memory of sorts between the synapses of my mind.I let it push forward and examine the tendrils probing my brain.

And then… Toomin did nothing.

*

I began to panic. The One was gaining ground on me. _What do I need to do?_ I implored the Ellimist in my head. _Help me! Help Jeanne! Help her like you helped the dead Ketrans!_

Why was he hesitating? I dove into his memory, frantic.

_I was in the sea, and there was a dead Ketran woman floating in front of me — what was her name?_ Aguella. _She floated, and I felt her mind._

_“You are gone, Aguella,” I was speaking — Toomin was speaking. “This is only the shadow of you, the biological brain, neurons switched on, a biological computer. Nothing more.”_

_“Let me see,” she said. “Once more, let me see what I am.”_

_“No, no.”_

_“Ah.”_

_“Aguella. I…”_

The hesitation came from this instant! I zeroed into it, and I finally grasped the missing piece that Toomin required.

_<_ Jeanne _! > _I said, with my mind. It wasn’t thought-speak, not exactly, but it might as well have been — she and I, we were connected forever now, one way or another. _<_ Jeanne, I need your permission for what I’m about to do. _>_

_She would give the answer I sought. Her will was long gone, long since flown away._

_<_ I am making you a part of me, Jeanne. Do you understand? I am downloading you, your thoughts, your knowledge. All that you were. Are.>

_< Oui>_, she said.

That was enough.

*

I don’t know how to describe what happened next. Toomin pushed back against The One, he reached around Jeanne, and he plucked her out of its network the way you might pick fruit off a tree. He brought her into us — into me, and then I felt her in my consciousness, whole and complete and filled with hope. Toomin just _did_ it — swiftly and efficiently, taking her back, and then they both withdrew into the recesses of my mind. The One did not follow; when Toomin sliced Jeanne away, we both fell back, separate and distinct. The black tendrils snaking up my arm dissolved completely and fell into the floor, and Jeanne’s body shriveled and fell into itself, returning to the death it had been denied.

It was a ghoulish sight, but inside my head: _euphoria_. I had rescued Jeanne, in the only way she could have been rescued. She was safe now, as safe as she could be.

_Thank you_ , I whispered to Toomin, but he had already faded, like an animal mind when demorphing.

*

I looked up, a huge grin spreading across my face.

“I did it!” I said. “She’s okay, now!”

Cassie and Erek were about to literally kill me. She was in wolf morph, on her haunches, teeth fully bared. Even Erek had assumed a defensive pose, although he certainly couldn’t have attacked. I realized this must have been terrifying to them — everything had transpired in silence, and I was _covered_ in the brackish goo, with a shriveled up dead lady in front of me.

I raised my hands. “I’m okay! See? You remember what I told you about the Ellimist’s memories? Do you remember _Father_? Well — The One is something very much like Father. And because the Ellimist knew how to beat Father — I knew how to take Jeanne out of it. She’s here now — she’s inside my head. She’s _okay_. And I’m okay — I swear! It’s just me!”

<She’s okay?> Cassie asked. <Jeanne is okay?>

“Yes — she’s right here,” I tapped my head. “I know it’s weird, believe me — but she’s safe there. She’s happy.

“And if we can save her,” I said, looking at them. “We can save the others.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For hardcore fans, by a hardcore fan.
> 
> If you found this chapter to be super weird, I highly suggest reading the portions of "The Ellimist Chronicles" that took place on Father's planet. In my opinion, they're some of the weirdest parts of the original series, but with the direction this story is taking, I couldn't get away from them. We'll be delving much deeper into the connections between Father/The One in later chapters, so please just trust me when I promise that I'm not pulling any handwaving trickery here.
> 
> Next chapter coming out Thursday, Nov. 22 at 9 p.m. ET. Get ready to eat some turkey!


	30. Freedom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rachel, Cassie and Erek proceed on their rescue mission.

It took me a long time to convince them that I was myself, and it was harder because I didn’t have all the answers.

The Ellimist had killed Father. I couldn’t remember how, exactly, but I was _certain_ of this. The Ellimist had suffered under Father in unimaginable ways, and he would have taken pains to ensure Father’s complete destruction.

And Erek pointed out: The One operated differently than Father. Father had required a physical connection to his victims in order to control them, but retaining control over a distance did not seem to be a problem for The One. Jeanne thought this was due to quantum entanglement, which Erek tried to explain to Cassie and I, but he stopped when we met him with blank stares.

We did know two things for sure: The One was an _awful_ lot like Father, and, per admission from the Drode, The One had been created by Crayak.

But — and this was the question I couldn’t answer — if the Ellimist had destroyed Father so completely, how could Crayak create such an accurate facsimile of him?

*

Finally, Cassie and Erek believed me, and we could move on.

We treaded deeper into the warehouse — seven large rooms, maybe six? Two more were large and atrium-like, with creatures of various different races hanging from the ceiling, all of them connected by that slightly-moving black cord — The One, currently dormant. Erek estimated it had around 2,000 aliens wrapped up in it.

A few more rooms in, and Cassie lifted her head, sniffing the air.

<I smell… you, Rachel,> she said.

“Wow, thanks Cassie,” I said sarcastically. “I haven’t exactly had a chance to shower.”

<No, I mean — you were close to here, before — were you bleeding?>

Just as she spoke, I spotted the signs of my escape.

“Blood!” I said, nearly shouting. “That’s my bloodI was here! We’re close!”

“Rachel — “ Erek said, but I was racing forward now. There was the first door — that was where the Animorphs had watched me! The second one was nearly ripped off its enormous hinges. This is where the Minotaur had been!

I turned to Erek. “She’s here! Lourdes is here!”

She lay crumpled on the floor, where I had left her. Erek rushed past me, falling to his metal knees at her side. He pressed something against her arm, and a cable shot out into hers.

<It doesn’t look good, does it?> Cassie said, in private thought-speak. I nodded my head in agreement.

“She’s — she’s there,” Erek said, after a moment. “Her core is unaffected, but nearly every other system has sustained some sort of damage. She’s little more than a hulk of metal at this point.”

“Can you fix her?” I asked.

“Yes — yes, I think so,” Erek said. “It is… the level of damage to one of us is unprecedented. I cannot believe this.” He scooped her into his arms. “I must get her back to the ship. I need to —“

“You need to help us find the Animorphs, first,” I said. “She’ll be okay a little longer, right?”

He blinked, then nodded.

*

We went into the side room, Erek clutching Lourdes close to him. The terminal was where I had left it. When I tapped its screen, it shimmered back to life, still on the same screen: the four Animorphs, blinking blue. Lourdes, faded red.

I pointed at it and looked at Erek. “Do your robot thing.”

He didn’t even put her down, just readjusted her so his free arm could tap and swipe. After a moment, he snorted and smashed the side of the terminal with his hand.

<What are you doing!> Cassie yelped.

“Faster this way,” Erek grunted, and jammed a finger directly into the wiring.

The terminal blazed with a yellowish color. From the other room, we heard groaning and grinding of metal.

“You were right, this place _is_ a warehouse,” Erek said. “They were hanging up in one of the chambers — none of the ones we went through. They’ll come here, now, one at a time. Upon arrival, they’ll be decanted.”

<What does that mean?> Cassie asked.

“Near as I can tell — it means they’ll be released from The One?” Erek said. He frowned. “That’s not exactly right. There’s another connotation here, but I’m not sure what it is. Maybe they’ll be able to tell us.”

He paused. “There’s more information…” He frowned as data flowed from the terminal into him. “There’s a great amount of information on — on you, Rachel.”

“Me?” I blinked. “What kind of information?”

“Medical — your body _was_ grown here. There are data points, measurements, readings… including from after the _ixcila_ was implanted…” He looked up at me. “This is extraordinary.”

“Just — just download all of it,” I asked. The knowledge of a trove of medical data about me did not sit well with me. “Maybe it can answer some questions — but not right now.”

“Understood, I’ve downloaded the information, but I will not access it any further without your permission,” Erek said. He unstuck his finger from the terminal, and hoisted Lourdes back into his arms. “I’m going to bring her back to the ship. Your friends can only be decanted one by one — Aximili is coming first. When he arrives, remove him from the tube and close the door. That will trigger it to be discarded, which will allow the next pod to arrive.”

<Er,> Cassie said. <Will he be conscious?>

“I doubt it,” Erek said. “He’s been inside The One for more than three years. I suspect it will take time for his mind to recalibrate.”

<I mean — I don’t think Rachel and I can lug an Andalite around,> Cassie said. <I don’t have any morphs that can pull that off.>

“Just get him out of the tube,” Erek said as he started to walk out of the room. “I know the way now, it won’t take me long.”

And then he was gone.

*

<This sounds mean, but I hope he’s _not_ conscious, > Cassie said. <I do not want to deal with a ticked off Andalite, swinging his tail around.>

I agreed. “At least you can morph — if he takes off my arm, it’s gone for good.” Then I remembered something. “There’s a force field we can trigger, to separate us. They used it on me, to keep me separate from them… I wonder why they did that?”

_< They didn’t want you assimilated.>_

I thought it was Cassie speaking at first, but then I realized the thought-speak had a French accent, and it was coming from inside my own mind.

_Jeanne?_

_< Oui,_> she said. _< I would like to help you, if I can.>_

_Oh. Sure._

_< The One wanted very much for you to be as genetically close to your original self as possible. That meant you could not be assimilated. Being assimilated — it changes you.>_

_Changes you — how?_

_< I do not know the biological mechanism exactly. But I know that the ability to invoke The One — and to have it manifest within you — the abilities alter a being at a fundamental level. It is what allows you to shift and change as the One desires.>_

After a second, she added: _< It’s awful, to not have control of your form… I much prefer being inside your head.>_

Okay, well, this was weird, but it made sense. Once The One had recanted you, it could melt your body and enslave your mind, like a Yeerk morphing a body it controlled. _Lovely_.

But that left a question unanswered, which I offered to Jeanne: _Why didn’t The One want me to be assimilated?_

_< Crayak didn’t want it. As for why that is — I don’t know. The One does whatever Crayak wants. It does not question him.>_

*

<Rachel?>

“Sorry,” I said. “Uh, believe it or not — Jeanne and I were chatting. She’s in there. She knows some stuff. Maybe some stuff that can help us.”

<Anything about the force field?>

“Ah,” I said. “No. But it can’t be that hard. I know that Ax was manipulating something over here…” I walked to where he had stood. There was a simple screen, with the layout of the room. I looked at it, but there were no symbols or dials. I looked at Cassie, shrugged, and swiped across the center of it.

She yelped — an orange haze cut down to her side, nearly hitting her.

<Be careful!> She said.

“Sorry!” I replied. I took my finger, touched the line of the force field, and dragged it away from her. The field shimmered slightly as it drew back, moving toward the wall closer to me. I touched the bottom of the screen — and the field vanished.

<Maybe let’s see if he just doesn’t wake up right away,> Cassie said. <That force field is nothing to mess with… I think it singed my coat. How close is he?>

“Close,” I said. There was actually a little progress bar across the top of the screen. “Maybe another few minutes?”

<Great,> She paused. <What’s it going to be like… to see them again?>

“What do you mean?” I asked.

<It’s just — we fell apart, after you died. Things weren’t like they were during the war.>

“It’s okay,” I said, although, privately, I shared her concerns. “We’ll have a chance to fix that, now. We just have to get them back first.”

The terminal suddenly beeped, and a pod slipped down from the ceiling, into the center of the room. Cables snaked from the floor, and liquid began to drain from it en masse. Two eyes on stalks appeared — Ax’s head (he did _not_ have a mouth, I was thrilled to see) — his torso, and those delicate, tiny hands. It was contorted in the tube slightly, his haunches shoved awkwardly against the glass.

“Decantation complete,” a voice said over the intercom. The glass front slid up, and Ax fell, flopping in front of the pod, his tail dangling over the edge of it. He was breathing — very slightly.

<Ax?> Cassie said. <Can you hear me? Ax, it’s Cassie. If you can hear me — even if you can’t speak — move something, just a little bit.>

He didn’t move.

“I think — I think he’s out of it,” I said. “Come on. Morph out, and — “

<Wait,> Cassie began to sniff the air. <Rachel — something is wrong.>

I studied Ax, but he wasn’t moving.

<Not him,> Cassie said. <I smell — something is nearby. It smells… _wrong._ >

She darted toward the door to the room, stopping a few feet from it.

<It’s here,> she said. <The Minotaur — it’s right outside.>

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For hardcore fans, by a hardcore fan.
> 
> Hope ya'll had a wonderful dinner today! On Thanksgiving, I'm grateful for all of YOU readers. Thanks for your comments!
> 
> We're also at something of a milestone: we are now almost certainly halfway through this story! Hopefully you've enjoyed it so far, and the second half will prove satisfying.
> 
> I've got no plans to break the chapter-every-two-days cadence. I'm still about ten chapters ahead, which gives me time to edit as things change. I have the end firmly plotted out and moving along on schedule toward it.
> 
> Thanks for reading!
> 
> Next chapter coming out Saturday, Nov. 24 at 9 p.m. ET.


	31. The Animorphs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A long-awaited rescue is underway.

<Stay here — I’ll draw it off,> Cassie said. <We planned for this.>

“Okay,” I said. “Be careful — “

But she had already darted outside the door, emitting high-pitched yips as she scurried to the right, deeper into the facility. The Minotaur made that loud, terrifying bellow and loped after her — I saw its dark shadow pass by the door.

I turned back to Ax, who hadn’t moved. I needed to get him fully outside of the tube and close the door, so the next Animorph could arrive.

“All right, come on, Ax-man,” I said, bending over and grabbing underneath his armpits. I lifted, and his body sagged slightly, but was firmly within the tube. “Ugh… If I only had a Cinnabon right now, you’d be up and running.”

_< Lift with your legs,> _Jeanne said.

“I got this!” I grumbled, but I did realign to her suggestions, and Ax slipped forward a few inches, his back haunches coming out of the tube. I saw his tail twitch, and for a second, one of his eyes lifted up and blinked.

<R… Rachel?> He whispered.

“Yep!” I said, dragging him back. “If you could help me out _at all_ , that would be _really great_ right about now!”

<There… is a… _Cinnabon_? >

His stalk eye closed, and his tail flopped back to the floor.

“Or not,” I said.

*

“Where’s Cassie?”

To my relief, Erek was re-entering the room.

“My monster showed up,” I said. “She’s distracting it. Think you can get this guy to the ship? He’s alive, just not very talkative.”

Erek slid his arms under Ax’s torso and — I’m not kidding — threw the Andalite up over his shoulders like some kind of bizarre fur stole.

“I”ll be back soon,” he said. “We need to get out of here as fast as we can.”

“What’s going on?”

He shook his head. “You’ll see — just get them moving, now.” He darted out the door. I turned and yanked the pod door down, hearing it click.

“Decantation complete,” a woman’s voice came over the speaker. “Remnants will now be discarded.”

The tube dropped into the floor faster than I could blink. I was _really_ glad to not be in it, this time.

From above me, I heard whatever conveyor belt was in the ceiling begin to start rolling again.

“Okay,” I said, rushing back to the other room. “Let’s see who’s next.”

*

It was Marco, and I didn’t have long to wait. Barely a minute had passed since Erek had left when his tube dropped down from the ceiling and began to drain. I waited, his face slowly appearing. When the glass slid up, I was ready, and caught him, fully pulling him outside the tube.

“I’m glad you’re short,” I said. I set him down and pressed the tube’s lid. It snapped shut, and the computer rattled on about discarding, and the tube dropped out of sight.

On the floor, Marco stirred.

“Of course _you_ had to wake up,” I groaned. “Hey — hey there, Marco. It’s me, Rachel.”

Marco groaned. He coughed, and a burst of the liquid from inside the tube sloughed out onto the floor. I rolled him onto his side, where he continued to hack out his lungs.

“Yeah, nice to see you too,” I said.

“Ugh,” Marco muttered. “This _sucks._ You’re not even going to give me mouth-to-mouth? I could be _choking_ to death right now.”

“I’ve heard what you kiss like,” I shot back. “You think I want to die again?”

He was struggling to sit up, but his limbs weren’t completely working. His legs would jerk, and his arms would twitch.

“I feel… I don’t feel _right_ ,” he said. He closed his eyes. “It’s not in my head anymore, though. _It’s not in my head_.”

“What about the others?” He asked.

“Ax is free,” I said. “Jake or Tobias is up next — not sure which. Erek’s coming back soon to help. Cassie — well, she’s busy, but she’s around.”

“Erek — King?”

“Yep,” I said.

“Man,” Marco shook his head. “Can’t wait to see his and Jake’s happy reunion. Cassie… ugh, if Jake makes it awkward I’m going to slap him.” His arm flopped out, and he smacked himself in the face. I burst out laughing.

“Not fair!” He grumbled. “Why do I feel so messed up? I couldn’t even pick my nose if I wanted to. Could you help me out? Big booger, left nostril, wayyyy back in there.”

“Oh, how I missed you,” I said dryly.

“I missed you too,” he said, but the way he said it, I knew he wasn’t joking. “You’re okay? You’re doing okay? We could see you before, and we could talk to you — kind of. I thought — I knew The One couldn’t kill you. You’re too mean.”

“Yup, I’m fantastic,” I said, tipping my head back and giving him the huge, vapid grin of a cheerleader. “I’m like, _so_ great. My rib is broken, I’m cut up, and I can’t morph any more! Go team!”

“Did your memories come back?”

“Not all of them, but a lot, yeah.”

He sighed. “It could’ve been worse. It could’ve been _a lot_ worse. None of us were sure it would work this time. If the _ixcila_ hadn’t bonded… you would’ve been gone.”

“What do you mean — _this time?_ ” I said.

Marco blinked.

“I wasn’t sure if you’d remember,” he said. He sounded queasy. “That wasn’t the first — The One didn’t want to grow a body for you. That was something Tobias convinced it to do. We weren’t even sure it would work. They tried to graft you into someone, but you wouldn’t take. It — it killed her, and we weren’t sure what it had done to the _ixcila_. We thought maybe we’d used up our chance.”

“Who was she?” I asked. “The person it killed.”

“You didn’t know her,” Marco said. “Her name was Jeanne.”

*

_< It was not your fault,> _Jeanne said. _< I am not angry. In a way, you rescued me.>_

_I’m so sorry,_ I could stop saying that. _I’m so — so sorry._

_< You couldn’t help it. You did not have conscious thoughts. When you emerged, you attacked. It was not painful, and it was over quickly.>_

_I killed you!_ Guilt tore through me.

_< But then you saved me,> _Jeanne said. _< The One may have let my body die, but it would not release my mind. I was nothing more than a ghost. But now I live again. Because of you.>_

_Okay_ , I said. _But you… you were innocent. That shouldn’t have happened to you._

_< These things happen in war.>_

*

“Earth to Xena, this is Earth, you there?”

“Ah!” I snapped out of it. “Sorry — I, uh — I sort of someone living in my head right now. It’s Jeanne, actually. Long story.”

_< Ugh, did you have to tell him?> _Jeanne said, sounding annoyed. _< In six months on that ship, he never stopped hitting on me.>_

“She says hi,” I said.

Marco just stared. “Er, what?”

To my relief, we were interrupted by another tube suddenly plunking into place. It began to drain, and I saw Jake’s tired face appear in the glass.

“Hey cuz,” I said. “Funny to see you here.”

“He might be — he might be more messed up than the rest of us,” Marco said. He sounded scared. “Crayak — the Drode — they took him for a while.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that after we were captured, but before we were recanted — the Drode took him to Crayak’s ship,” Marco said. “He was only gone a few hours — but when he came back, he was _messed up_. He was catatonic, and didn’t speak a word until The One controlled him.

“Not that they gave us much of a chance to talk, though,” Marco said. He shivered. “The One took us in right after he got back — we couldn’t talk to each other, not really, at least, when we were… you know.”

I understood: He meant they they couldn’t talk to each other when they had been under control of The One, under control by the Drode.

“Well, if you think it’s weird, how do you think I feel?” I said. His eyes were closed, and the last of the fluid was draining from the tube. “The last time I talked to Jake, the _real_ Jake, he ordered me to die.”

*

Jake wasn’t waking up.

He was alive — he was breathing, slowly and deeply, and at one point, his eyes fluttered open. But he wasn’t awake. He didn’t respond to Marco’s jokes, or when I shook his shoulders lightly. His head just rolled back and he closed his eyes. He didn’t move a muscle.

“He’ll be okay,” Marco said, but it sounded like he was trying to convince himself more than me.

“Erek will know what to do,” I said.

As if he had heard me, he stepped through the door.

“Marco, how nice to see you again,” he said.

“You too, Robocop,” Marco chirped. “You’re looking a little rusty, though. Get caught in the rain?”

“You haven’t changed a bit,” Erek saw Jake. “Is he…”

“Jake’s not home right now,” I said. “I think — he’s going to need whatever help we can give him.”

“Have Cassie say hi,” Marco said. “She’ll trigger his angst. That’ll wake him.”

“Shut _up_ ,” I said, but his smirk told me he had seen the start of a smile he’d worked out of me. _God, I missed them._

Erek picked up Jake, slinging him over his shoulder like a sack of flour, and then he bent over and told Marco to grab onto his back.

“Get Tobias,” Erek said. “Then come back — straight back, as fast as you can.”

“What about Cassie?”

“I already told her to get back — last I saw her, she was in that room with the mezzanine, with the Minotaur. She knows.”

He bounded out of the room, a protesting Marco whining indignantly as he bounced on Erek’s back, which was _so_ satisfying to hear.

*

Now it was me alone, waiting for Tobias.

_< I’m with you,> _Jeanne said, as if she could sense my unease. _< You love this man, yes?>_

“Can you read my mind?!” I said aloud, stunned.

_< No, and you can’t read mine,> _she said. _< But I know your story. I knew all of your stories — Santorelli and I read them before we set off into space. Your relationship with Tobias wasn’t exactly common knowledge, but it wasn’t a secret.>_

“I do love him,” I said, to the empty room. It felt so strange to say out loud, and I suddenly felt so ashamed. “We never talked about it. But I needed him. I think I needed him more than he needed me. And I didn’t realize it until just before the end.”

_< So dramatic,> _Jeanne said, and I heard amusement in her voice. _< You know, at the bottom of all this, you are still a sixteen-year-old girl who is nervous about meeting a boy. All the other things that have happened — they are just things distracting you from this truth. Try and remember that, to keep you grounded.>_

She was right — of course she was right. I was nervous now because meeting Tobias now wasn’t like seeing him right after I had been revived — not only had Tobias not been Tobias, but I hadn’t had my memories. I hadn’t remembered all those nights in my bedroom, those last whispers in the dark… and now, for the first time, I would have to confront him. We would have to talk about those whispers, and we would have to see where they might lead us.

I have faced down monsters, and I have clawed my way through aliens. I have been lost in time and I’ve been torn apart, but right now, this was the scariest thing I could imagine.

Tobias’s pod slipped down from the ceiling and began to drain. His bedraggled little hawk body dangled in the liquid, suspended from wires.

_< I will be with you,>_ Jeanne whispered.

“Thanks, Jeanne,” I replied, and I meant it.

*

I swear that Marco’s tube had taken about a minute to drain, but Tobias’s felt like it took half a day. The door finally opened, and I reached in and put my fingers around his little ribcage. After hefting Ax, and dragging Jake and Marco, he felt so light and delicate.

“Hey,” I whispered. His small beak was open, and his breast beat slowly. “Hey, Tobias. It’s me. It’s Rachel.”

One eye opened, slowly. A warble came out of his throat, indistinct and faint. He pressed a talon weakly, fluttered a feather.

“Tobias,” I said again. “Tobias!”

I could feel his heart beating faster in my hands. He kept trying to push me and scrape his talons, but he was too weak to hurt me.

“Tobias,” I repeated. “It’s me. It’s Rachel.”

*

If Jeanne hadn’t stopped me, I don’t know how long I might have held him in my arms and just stood there, frozen and whispering.

_< Rachel,> _she cut in, intensely. _< RACHEL. Erek can help him back at the ship.>_

“You’re right,” I said. My throat felt full, and my nose was on the verge of running. My whole world was folding in on me and crashing down. I could feel it choking me — it felt like how I had felt when being brought back to life, except in reverse. Then, my body had been released, unraveled, opened up — now it closed inward with a violent pressure.

_He’s just a bird now,_ I thought as I started to walk toward the door. _He’s not human anymore. Not at all._

*

I moved as fast as I could, sprinting back the way we had come. My mind was numb, and my feet moved on total autopilot. I couldn’t process anything other than _He’s not human. He’s not human._

I hadn’t gotten far when I heard Cassie’s screams.

They were terrified and primal, one I had heard a thousand times before, usually before I silenced it. It was the sound prey makes when facing an imminent and terrible death. What was scarier: it was a _human_ scream, meaning she must have been forced to demorph — and in a battle, you never had a _good_ reason to demorph.

It cut through everything else I was feeling and stopped me dead in my tracks. Her shrieks were coming from behind me, from the way I had come.

I took a deep breath, expecting Jeanne to say something.

_< What are you waiting for?!>_ she barked. _< Go save her!>_

I turned around, tucking a struggling red-tailed hawk under my arm, and raced to save my best friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been so pumped to publish this chapter. Hope you are, too!
> 
> Next chapter to be released Monday, Nov. 26 at 9 p.m. ET.


	32. The Monster

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rachel grapples with the Minotaur.

It didn’t take me long to find them.

They were just past the room where all this had started, one of those split level atriums with a mezzanine. Cassie was dangling from a railing while the Minotaur swiped at her from above — she was barely holding on, and it could almost reach her.

It was so distracted, it didn’t see me enter the room.

I thought fast. I had my shredder, but I wasn’t sure it was a good idea to use it (I was remembering all those times the Yeerks shot me up as a grizzly, when I just barreled back at them). I had to be smarter.

I set Tobias on the ground. _Please be quiet and don’t go anywhere_ , I thought. He tried to stand and flex a wing, but his body sort of jerked, out of his control.

I turned to the Minotaur and ran toward it. It was leaned up, over the banister, its snout leering, it’s claws nearly able to reach her —

_I’m lifting with my legs_ , I said to Jeanne.

I shoved with all my might, shoving my palms right above its talons. My hands dug into heavy, wet flesh — this was no hologram — and I pushed as hard as I could.

The Minotaur’s head swiveled back and an arm shot around for me — but it was too late! It had overbalanced, and I had just enough leverage to tip it over some axis. The Minotaur growled and went hurtling over, crashing onto the floor a story down.

I reached down and wrapped my fingers around Cassie’s elbows.

“Come on,” I said, pulling backward, lifting her back up, ignoring the screaming pain that was coursing through my ribcage. I had too much momentum, and we both tumbled backwards when she came over the railing, falling back onto our butts.

“I — I thought I was good,” she said, breathing hard. She was splattered with blood, and there was a chunk of her shoulder missing. “He took a piece out of me, when I was in wolf morph, I was hurt pretty bad. I had to demorph. I thought I’d lost it. I was going to morph back but — he caught me off guard.”

“It’s okay,” I said. I could hear the Minotaur growling beneath us, snarling and knocking debris around. “Erek says we need to get out of here, now.”

“Did you get the others?”

“Yeah,” I turned around, and saw what looked like a drunk red-tailed hawk trying to fly away. Tobias was able to flutter up about a foot before a wing would go crossways, and then he’d flop back down to the earth. It was the most undignified I’d ever seen him, and it would have been hilarious if the sight of it didn’t feel me with a sick dread. “Something’s wrong with Tobias, though. He — he’s not using thought-speak. I don’t think he’s — “

I couldn’t say it. _Human anymore_.

Cassie must have sensed my pain, because she walked over to Tobias and picked him up, cradling him firmly in her arms. He went instantly docile, like most animals seemed to do around her. She’d always had a gift for that, ever since we were kids.

“We’ll fix him up,” she said. “Don’t worry about it.”

Just then, we heard the bellow of the Minotaur — and then the beast _vaulted_ itself above the railing. Several hundred points of muscle and bone — like a dumpster flying through the air — crunched loudly on the mezzanine a few feet away. It roared again, and — terrifyingly — its neck extended out further than I had ever seen it.

We bolted for the door. Cassie was out first, and I tried to pull it shut behind me. I was somewhat successful, but there wasn’t a lock on this one. The Minotaur hit it like a freight train, and we heard it moan and nearly give.

“Take Tobias — and get to Erek!” I yelled. “You’re hurt!”

“But what about you?!”

I flashed her the look that Marco used to call my Xena grin, my crazy Amazon warrior kickass look.

“Don’t worry about me — I’ve got a plan!”

*

I didn’t have a plan.

I wasn’t even sure it was a smart decision for me to push her away. But the two of us by ourselves couldn’t outrun the Minotaur, and it would take too long for her to morph. If all three of us made a break for the _Rachel_ , all three of us would die. If I stayed behind, therefore, two of us were guaranteed to live.

When it comes to dying for my friends, I’m an old pro.

I still had the shredder, though. I pulled the weapon from the holster at my waist and raised it.

“ _Hasta la vista, bay —”_ I started to say, but when I pulled the trigger, the recoil knocked my hand backward and sent the gun spinning to the left. My shot went wild, leaving a large char mark above the doorway.

“Son of a — “ I yelled.

The Minotaur stepped back, wary now of me. I saw where the gun had fallen, but it was too far away.

I bolted back through the corridor, into the room where we had decanted the Animorphs. I glanced at the spot where the decantation tubes had been, but I must have closed Tobias’s out of habit, because it had already been discarded. Whatever, it wasn’t like I _wanted_ another tour of that cave of corpses.

I glanced around desperately, for anything I could use. The room was in shambles, with debris scattered along the floor. I picked up a piece that I thought I might use as a weapon, but when I whacked it against the wall to test it, it crumpled into dust.

“This place sucks,” I said.

The Minotaur appeared in the doorframe, snout tentatively reaching in. I suddenly flashed back to earlier, when I stood here, my mind scattered and helpless, and the fear that coursed through it. I shut it down with a snarl: if I was going to be killed now, at the end of all of this, at least I wouldn’t die afraid.

I stared as the monster took a step inside, almost lazy now. It knew I was prey, and it knew I had nowhere to go.

_Nowhere to go…_

And just like that, I had an idea.

*

“Come on, mini-mini-mini-tarrrr,” I said, drawing the word out. “You know what Mini-tars wear? They wear _mini-_ skirts.” I started to walk along the side of the room, in front of the decantation pod. It stopped where it was at and watched me, licked its lips. It almost seemed curious now — it had seen me cower, it had seen me charge — but this was new.

“Yeah, you’d look good in a miniskirt,” I was totally pulling a Marco, telling stupid, nonsensical jokes to distract myself from the fact that I was doing something completely insane. “How about from the Gap? We’ll go there, we’ll pick up a _mini_ skirt for the _Minitarrr_. They might not let you wear it at school, though. But that’s okay.” I was almost in position. “Everyone knows the mall is where it’s at, anyway.”

I reached out and _swiped_ my finger across the touchscreen now within my grasp.

A force field shot down the center of the room, in front of the Minotaur. It bellowed and leaped backwards — I had nicked a foot that had been in the wrong place, and one of its claws now hung severed on the floor in front of me.

It roared and tried to charge, but slapped against the force field and rebounded backward. It growled, not frightened but shocked, backed up, charged again. Its snout crunched against the force field, and I audibly heard a crack.

“Stop it,” I said. “You’re just hurting yourself.”

It snarled at me, blood tripping from its head. It took a few steps to the left and swung a great paw; the force field sizzled, but held.

My heart was pounding so fast, I thought it would pop out of my chest. I took the force field and moved it backwards slowly, pushing the Minotaur against the back wall. It growled and whined, confused as to why it was forced back. Finally it was held in place, without any room to move. Its eyelids peeled back and it stared at me, sniffing the air, panting like a dog.

And… something was wrong.

It wasn’t a sense of dread, or fear, anymore. The monster was at my mercy. I had won. I could drag a finger and it would be crushed.

But I couldn’t stop staring at its creepy, weird eyes. I couldn’t stop listening to its ragged breathing, see the way its tongue lolled out, almost like a dog.

In a way, I thought suddenly, the Minotaur was not unlike me. We had both been born here, in a sense. It had been made to kill me, and didn’t I know what it was like to be groomed to kill? We had both been used the same way, for the same purpose.

I tried to think back to the war. I tried to picture a single being — human or alien — whose life I had taken. I wanted to see their face in my mind.

But I couldn’t, and this time, it had nothing to do with my recent brain scrambling. I couldn’t remember the faces of the people I had killed because, in some way, they just hadn’t counted. I tore through them for a purpose: to save the world, but what was difference between _saving the world_ and what the Minotaur was doing when it all resulted in the same, bloody thing?

“You’re being stupid, Rachel,” I whispered. I didn’t have time for this. I needed to get back to the ship, and I needed to get away from this place. A quick flick of the wrist, and the Minotaur would be crushed and forgotten.

Still, I held back.

My gaze drifted across its talons, along the tusks, past the grizzly bear bulk. The Drode had chosen this form for its ferocity and for its ability to inspire… not exactly _empathy_ in me, but something close to it.

In spite of everything, I felt sorry for it.

I felt sorry for the Minotaur, and sorry for me. Sorry for what Crayak and the Ellimist and their baffling games had do us both.

It wasn’t the Minotaur’s fault that it was a monster, and that it was vicious. It was what the Drode made it, and because the Drode drew from me as inspiration, it was what _I_ had made it.

But that didn’t make the Minotaur any less dangerous. I couldn’t control it. I couldn’t trust it. And on the loose, he could destroy our small group, so fragile.

Maybe.

It snarled and swiped a bloody foot, leaving a trail across the floor.

“I’m one of the good guys,” I muttered.

*

When I returned to the _Rachel_ , I carried the severed talon of the Minotaur in my pocket. I looked like hell, but I did manage to fix my hair before I entered the ship.

Erek nodded when I walked in, but didn’t say anything — he was raising the gangplank and preparing for takeoff, about as hastily as he could. From the light of the hangar bay, I saw that another Ketran sun was beginning to rise.

I walked through the ship, where I found Cassie in the medical ward, sitting next to Jake. Tobias was on the table next to her, his little bird body looking so tiny. He was unconscious and hooked up to a comically large oxygen mask.

Marco saw me and started saying Marco things, but I ignored him and sat in a chair next to Tobias. All I could think about was that I wished, I hoped, that he would whisper to me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are some somewhat subtle callbacks to the end of Book 48 in this chapter, if you're feeling like getting the full experience.
> 
> Next chapter coming out Wednesday, Nov. 28, at 9 p.m. ET.
> 
> One note: I previously said that I thought this whole story would be wrapped up by Christmas, but I apparently don't know how to do math. We're past the halfway point, and I expect this whole thing to wrap up closer to the end of January, per the post-every-two-days rule.
> 
> Thanks for reading! We've just about gotten everyone together now, and in the next few chapters, we'll start to feel the shift toward the endgame.


	33. Erek

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rachel confronts Erek about his actions during the war.

**** Erek took us out of the hangar fast, dodging the lasers with ease. The _Rachel_ was considerably more nimble than the Andalite ambassador ship. I barely felt us move as we darted across the sky.

In the medical bay, Lourdes lay on a small bed between Jake and Tobias, with Ax near the wall. She was literally plugged into the the ship, and small lights occasionally appeared and disappeared over her body.

Could she be brought back, and could she tell me what she had done to me? I was pretty sure I had guessed at most of it, but I was wondering about what Marco and Jeanne had told me. What had happened to me after I died, but before I woke up? What had the Drode done to Lourdes to get her to comply?

I sat there, lost in thought, until I heard the ship settle, and stop. I looked up, surprised. Weren’t we leaving Ket?

I glanced over at Cassie, but she was in a whole other world, transfixed with Jake, stroking his shoulder slowly. I decided not to interrupt her, and so I left the medical bay and headed for the bridge.

On arrival, I saw that Erek had brought us to another cavern, cool and dark.

“Too hot to leave?” I asked, sitting down into a chair.

“You might say that,” he said, and motioned to a console in front of him.

I saw lines of concentric arcs running up from a central point — the point was us, the _Rachel_ , and the arcs were distance indicators. All along those arcs were other points, drifting, moving, and sometimes zipping along.

“What are those?” I asked.

“Howlers, I think,” Erek said. “Most of them seem to be in a holding pattern, above the atmosphere, but some might be scouring the surface. I saw them on the screens when I brought Lourdes back. I’d hoped if we moved quickly enough, we could evade them, but I’m afraid their concentration was too heavy when we tried to leave.”

“Do they know we’re here?”

“I don’t think so,” Erek said. “When night falls, we might be able to break through their formation. The _Rachel_ is damaged, but not as bad as she looks. I’m confirming we are still capable of Zero Space travel now. If we are, once we find a chink in their forces, we can slip through it. If we take them by surprise, they might not be able to follow us.”

“Not a bad plan,” I said.

“If they _have_ seen us,” Erek said. “Then I don’t think we have a chance.”

“

“Are you okay?” I asked him.

He was in the middle of running tests and twirling dials, but he paused. 

“No,” he said. “I’m not okay.”

I threw my feet up on the armrests. “Talk to me, robot boy.”

“Why should I?”

“Because I can’t stay back there while Cassie tries not to cry and Marco cracks bad joke after bad joke.” I thought of Tobias. “And I don’t want to be alone with my thoughts, and I don’t think you want to be alone with yours, either.”

“I suppose that’s true,” he murmured. He didn’t speak for nearly a minute after that, and I was about to try and pull it out of him again, when he finally did. “I’ve been searching for Lourdes for so long… it is hard for me to see her like this. I was the one who ordered her.”

“You weren’t a general,” I pointed out. “She didn’t have to go.”

“Yes… but it was my suggestion. She wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for me.”

“Neither would I,” I pointed out.

He looked up at me, and when he spoke, his voice was colder. “Oh. So that’s what this is about.”

I sighed. “No, it’s not. Look — I don’t know exactly went down between you and the Animorphs after I bit the dust, but it must have been bad, if you have Cassie this angry with you.”

“I did what I was programmed to do — “

“Yeah, yeah,” I said, waving my hand. “I don’t care. I’m not even trying to be mean. I’ve just heard it all before. I’m not here to argue.”

“Then what do you want?”

“Look,” I said. “Like it or not — during the war, the Chee were spies. And you came to _us_ when you had something that needed to be done, or some horrible thing that _needed_ to be prevented from happening. You used _us_ to do dirty work. Humans — and aliens — they died because of what you told us. A lot of them.”

“But more were saved,” Erek said coldly.

“Right,” I said. “More were saved. But we — the Animorphs — we still had blood on our hands, and you and your people were _never_ willing to accept that you helped it get there. We were _kids_ , Erek. We were scared kids, and we _listened_ to you. We _trusted_ you. And you can justify it all you want, but you _used_ us.

“I understood why,” I said. “I understood more than the others did, and I didn’t care because _I loved the fight so much._ I leaned into it when they pulled back. They told themselves lies to keep going. They told themselves that you were our friend, that you were helping us save humanity.”

“I was your friend,” Erek said, sounding shocked. “I was doing all those things!”

“See, this is why she’s mad,” I said. “Because she’s finally grown up, and she can recognize that you’re lying now. Maybe you don’t see it, because of your programming, or whatever — I don’t know. You _used_ us, Erek. You _used_ us, and then you had the nerve to lecture us on morality after we did bad things for you. It would go a long, _long_ way for you to acknowledge that. To apologize for it.”

“It was a war!” Erek said, nearly shouting. “It was a war you had to win for your species, and we did you a favor by spying for you! You wouldn’t have lasted another year if it hadn’t been for us!”

“Yes,” I said. “It was a war. And in a war, we do things we wouldn’t do in peace time. The Animorphs did them. I…” 

_I’ll kill you!_

“…I did them. And _you_ did them too, Erek. We want you to admit that.” I stopped to see if he would reply, but he didn’t, so I went on. “Your decisions saved a lot of people — I’m certain of that. Maybe down the line, you even saved entire civilizations. Maybe your choices were morally justified, and your conscience really is clean, no matter how you slice and dice it.

“But — _You_. _Hurt_. _Us_. You sent children into evil places, and just because we came back — that doesn’t give you the right to tell us that _we_ were evil. We aren’t better than you, and you aren’t better than us. We were all monsters together. Accept that.”

*

“I… would like to think,” Erek said, after a moment had passed.

“Fine,” I said. “It matters more to them, anyway.”

“There is something else I would like to discuss with you,” Erek said. He tapped the screen in front of him, and the radii were replaced by a series of complicated charts and graphs. “I’d like to take a look at your medical records from the facility with you. The glimpse I saw before I encrypted it did not make sense.”

“Sure,” I said, somewhat relieved to have the subject changed. “What’s in my guts?”

“Your vitals, for the most part, are completely normal,” Erek said, pointing to a chart with numbers on it. “Your resting heart rate, blood pressure and hematocrit are all within normal ranges. You are in excellent health, at the macroscopic level.”

“But what about… the _other_ one,” I said, briefly forgetting the word _microscopic_. “The one some Helmacrons might run around in like the little psychos they are.”

Erek laughed. “Even on a cellular level, you are mostly the same. But on an atomic level — there is something very strange happening.

“I’m not exactly sure how to ask this without sounding insane,” Erek said. “Have you ever been near a black hole?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For hardcore fans, by a hardcore fan.
> 
> As we get into the next few chapters, a re-read of 53 and the first few chapters of 54 will be enormously useful.
> 
> Next chapter to be released Friday, Nov. 30, 9 p.m. ET.


	34. Little Yellow Line

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rachel finds out that Erek hasn't been telling the whole truth.

Erek pointed at a line curving from nothing to a spike on the dashboard. “This graph represents measurements of your brain activity through time. The left-hand side represents your body before the _ixcila_ bonded. You see a lot of flat lines — your brain had very little change aside from involuntary functions. Once the _ixcila_ was implanted — “ he pointed at a vertical blue line, cutting downward “— we see a dramatic spike in your brain activity. This is expected, as it represents your brain waves establishing themselves.”

He pointed to a neon yellow line, one that appeared just after the _ixcila_ had been activated. “But this one — this one makes no sense. This line didn’t even _exist_ before the _ixcila_ bonded, and then it spikes — like this. Even weirder, if I expand the graph out further,” he swiped with his hand. “You can see that the line becomes sinusoidal.”

“I got a C in trig, Erek.”

“It — it has a pattern, a frequency to it. A very _particular_ frequency.”

“What is it measuring?”

“Radiation.”

“What?!”

“Ah — not the bad kind,” he said, seeing the frightened look on my face. “You are in perfect medical health. This is a different kind of radiation, and it was _not_ present in any capacity before the _ixcila_ — it isn’t natural.”

I studied the line, tracing its valleys and plateaus with my eyes. “What does it have to do with black holes?”

“There is a theory in physics that revolves around the idea of light — or radiation — being capable of exerting a gravitational force. If you’re familiar with the famous equation —  _E=mc squared —_ “

“Physics was a senior elective,” I said dryly. “I never got that far.”

Erek sighed. “Okay. You know gravity, right? If you trip, you fall down.”

“I am familiar with the concept, yes,” I said, allowing some snark into my voice. That wasn’t _really_ fair to Erek, he was only trying to help. But he was scaring me more than a little bit.

“Something in the _ixcila_ is producing radiation that is only associated with extremely high gravitational fields. These fields are so extreme that they should only be able to occur around black holes. But somehow, the _ixcila_ is not only associated with it, it’s _perpetuating_ it. I’ve drawn on every physics textbook in my databases — I’ve never seen something so localized as it is in you.”

“But it’s not killing me?”

“It’s not doing anything, as far as I can tell. The only difference is that you are slightly more radioactive than the rest of us. It’s just very, very _strange._

_“_ It’s worth noting,” he added. “The pattern is so consistent, it might be possible to cancel it with destructive interference.”

“Cancel it?”

“If you know the frequency and amplitude of a wave — and you counter it with another wave of the opposing values, the two of them effectively cancel each other out.” He pointed to the monitor. “There’s your yellow line. If I introduce another wave —“ He twisted a dial, and a deep orange line appeared above it. “ — and I make sure it has similar properties, but in reverse —“ He turned the knob, and I saw the orange and yellow grow closer together, moving faster. “ — they’ll eventually cancel.”

The two lines suddenly became a single flat line. I still had no idea what any of it meant.

“So it’s _definitely_ not killing me?” I asked. “Because I’ve never been anywhere near a black hole, and I think I’d know. It’s gotta just be some symptom of the Arn tech. They probably used some creepy magnetized… orb… thing, and this is just a side effect.”

“No,” Erek said. “Cassie exhibits no such symptoms, and she also hosted an _ixcila._ ”

“Maybe it fades after a while?” I said desperately. “I’m sorry, Erek — I really don’t know.”

“What about from within the Ellimist’s memories?” He pressed.

“Maybe?” I said helplessly. “I remember Ket, and I remember Father — but give me a break here — it was _weird_ stuff, and there was a _lot_ of it. There’s a lot of pieces lying around I have to sift through. I don’t really have control over what becomes clear and when it does.”

He settled back, frowning. “Lourdes _might_ be able to help with that.”

“No!” I said, forcefully. The memory of her finger pressing my forehead, the trippy explosions inside my head — all of them were suddenly on the verge of causing an anxiety attack. “I don’t want someone mucking around in my head again. I don’t want it to break more than it already has.”

“I’m not going to force you,” Erek assured me. “Your neural map was fragmented, yes, but you clearly weren’t broken. I only wanted to suggest that Lourdes might be able to help assemble some of the pieces. You would have full control over it — if for some reason that is not the case, we will not attempt it. I give you my word.”

“How good is your word?” I asked. I wanted to sound menacing. I wanted him to be intimidating. But it came out weakly, almost as a whisper. 

Erek nodded slowly. “I know - I know that Cassie thinks I haven’t been truthful with her. And in a certain light, I understand how it might seem that way. But my lies were ones of omission, and not malice. The only things I didn’t tell her were things I thought couldn’t matter.”

“That’s shady, Erek,” I said. “You have to see how that’s shady. What you said got her to travel across the universe. And it might get her killed.”

“I made a mistake,” he conceded. “We were protected by Andalites — I thought we would be safe, Rachel. I really did. I wanted so badly to find out what happened to Lourdes after so long — I couldn’t leave her behind. And I _needed_ Cassie to become a part of that mission. I couldn’t do it without her. So… _yes_. I said what I needed to say to get her to agree to it.” He paused, and I got the sense that the words he spoke next were dragged out of him. “That was wrong of me.”

“You used her,” I said, and a little bit of tension went out of my body.

“Yes,” he said. “But it wasn’t malicious — I truly believed that Cassie could broker a Kelbrid/Andalite peace. She’s an excellent diplomat, Rachel, and a lasting agreement between two powerful races might have provided a healthy dynamic for much of the galaxy for centuries. I was using her to get on the Andalite mission, yes, but my goal was to save one person. She might guarantee the survival of _worlds_. If it had gone down the way I expected, no one would have been hurt.”

“I get it, Erek, I really do,” I said. And I did, I was just getting sick of hearing him try to rationalize all of it. I’d heard that tone of voice many times in my own head, when trying to justify things I had done.

“We’re all together in this now,” Erek said. “I’m going to do everything in my power to get us out of here. Besides,” he said, gesturing at the yellow line. “I don’t even know that this graph means anything. All I know is that it’s unusual.”

He paused, and after a few seconds, he tentatively, almost shyly, raised his robotic hand. “We have clashed many times, you and I, but we were always on the same side. I want to get back to my people, and I can do that by helping you. Are you willing to help me too?”

I looked at his hand, unmoving, metal fingers extended. This was possibly the most Erek and I had ever talked, one-on-one, and it did feel like he was extending me an olive branch. Should I extend one back?

I was about to lift my hand when Jeanne piped up: _< He’s hiding something.>_

_What?_

_< He’s talking in circles and playing off your emotions. He’s trying to distract you. It’s a useful tactic if one is being interrogated — if you tell irrelevant facts that sound accurate, perhaps your questioner won’t ask about the truth in the center.>_

That made a lot of sense to me, and absolutely fit Erek’s behavior so far. But what would he be hiding? I thought back to our interactions over the last day— had there been anything that struck me as off?

_< You don’t have to remember,> _Jeanne said. _< Just lay a trap for him. See if he falls into it.>_

“Erek…” I said, slowly. “How much did you know about why the Andalites were going to Kelbrid space?”

“Everything I told you,” he said calmly.

_< See? He’s talking around something!>_

“You had access to Andalite intelligence reports,” I said.

“The Chee have considerable surveillance, yes,” Erek said. “Our resources are not infinite, but we are capable of operating at frequencies above — “

“How much information did they have about Ket?” I asked him.

He shrugged. “They knew it was unpopulated and uninhabitable. I assumed it was chosen as a neutral zone because of its sparseness.”

I closed my eyes and withdrew my hand.

“In the warehouse — when we were walking under all those dangling bodies — you said the Andalite intelligence reports didn’t mention them,” I said. “What _did_ they mention?”

He didn’t respond. After a few seconds, he slowly lowered his hand.

“Erek, why aren’t you telling us everything?”

“Because it doesn’t matter now,” he grumbled. “It didn’t matter then. It didn’t factor into my decisions — “

“If it doesn’t matter, then just tell me,” I said. “You’ve got the chance to gain my trust. Don’t blow it, C3PO.”

“I hate those movies,” Erek said. “I wish you wouldn’t call me that.”

I waited. And eventually, after some grumbling and more talking around — he came clean.

“You,” Erek said finally, looking at me and sounding as angry as an android could sound. “ _You_ were in those intelligence reports. Vast amounts of the medical data they collected on _you_ were transmitted from Ket into Andalite space.”

“What?!”

“We knew _someone_ was building you a body. But the Andalites didn’t know who was doing it, and they had no idea why.”

“Cassie didn’t know,” I said.

“Correct,” Erek replied. “But that was part of the reason Andalite civilian leaders were so keen to get Cassie to participate in the mission — the potential for PR was significant. Imagine: Not only do the Andalites achieve a lasting peace with the Kelbrids — they might also manage to rescue an Animorph believed to have been killed in the war.” 

“What do you mean: _believed?”_ I asked. “I got filleted by a polar bear.”

He looked at me. “There was a small, but vocal part of the human population who speculated that your death had been faked or covered up.”

“What!” I said. “Like — the Flat-Earth people? Or the ones who believe the moon landing was fake?”

“Exactly,” Erek said. “They called it: ‘Rachelgate’.”

“Oh my _God_ ,” I said. “That’s not even clever!”

“The basic thought was — although I am paraphrasing here, because it’s all ridiculous — that as the fiercest Animorph, your death on the Blade Ship was a lie, and you had been turned into some kind of brainwashed super soldier in the Yeerk army, driven mad and killing anything they turned you loose on.” 

“That’s insane,” I said. “Like, that is _lock-me-in-a-mental-ward_ insane.”

“The vast majority of people knew that. The Andalite military _certainly_ knew that.”

“But the Andalites didn’t know about the _ixcila_ ,” I said, slowly. “They knew I would’ve been just a body…. _Jesus_. They were going to use me, weren’t they? They were going to pretend as if those lies were true, to get… I don’t know, whatever politicians get. More funding?”

“Yes,” Erek said. “Rescuing you — and having Cassie there when it happened — it was a temptation they could not resist. You would have represented a valuable piece of propaganda, even without your mind intact.”

“So I would just be… what, a living corpse propped up for photos?!” I shouted. “They were going to _Weekend at Bernie’s_ me?!”

“I never saw that movie, and I don’t plan to,” Erek replied.

“This is sick,” I said, shaking my head back and forth. “This is so, so sick.”

_And_ just _like the Andalites,_ I thought. How long had we held off the invasion waiting for them, only to find them ready to wipe out humanity if it meant destroying Yeerks? Even now, the Animorphs were still opportunities to be exploited.

After a minute, I was still shaking my head. “She wouldn’t have gone,” I said. “If they’d told Cassie about me — she wouldn’t have gone. She knew I was dead, and she wanted to put it all behind her.” I’d been so angry when she explained it to me at first, but now I understood. I even admired her for it. “Nothing could have convinced her. She wanted — “

I froze, and looked at Erek. “She wanted to move on. But she couldn’t, could she? She couldn’t move on because everybody was demanding that she be _The Last Animorph_. They wanted her to go into space and rescue everyone.”

“Yes…” Erek said slowly. “This was her chance for a lasting Kelbrid peace — a contribution to the entire galaxy that would resonate for gener — “

“You started the rumor,” I said. He froze. “The rumor that she was going to be part of a rescue expedition — it was you. She was your ticket to Kelbrid space — she was your ticket to find Lourdes. You _needed_ her on this mission.”

“The pressure was always there,” Erek said. “I didn’t create that.”

“But you ramped it up,” I said. “You knew exactly what levers to pull, what buttons to press. How’d you do it? Tip off some newspaper reporter?”

“Social media,” Erek said quietly. “It’s a new thing that started shortly after your demise. News spreads quickly on it. Nobody checks if it’s true. There’s a platform called MySpace — once it spread from the fringe to the mainstream, it didn’t take long.”

“ _Jesus_ , Erek. This is not OK. You realize how so _not OK_ this is, don’t you?”

“I just wanted to find Lourdes,” he said. For once, he sounded _ashamed_ rather than cocky. “I made a terrible mistake when I sent her onto the Blade Ship — I wanted to fix it. I thought this might be my only chance. None of the things I did hurt anybody — I thought Cassie would make peace and cement her legacy.”

“She would have done that her own way,” I said. “Cassie’s strong. She’s stronger than me. She would have done just fine without you manipulating her.”

“I just wanted to help,” he said desperately. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do. I just want to help.”

Behind us, I heard a sound.

I turned, and there was Cassie, standing at the doorway to the bridge. Her face was frozen. The expression was neutral and cryptic. How much had she heard?

“Cassie — “ Erek began.

She lifted up a hand. “Not now,” she said. “Lourdes is awake.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter to be released Sunday, Dec. 2 at 9 p.m. ET.


	35. The Kandrona is Dead...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rachel finds out what happened after she died on the Blade Ship.

Lourdes's hologram was flickering on and off when we walked in. _Blink_ : a robotic mess of an android, broken wires, an occasional spark. _Blink:_ flowing golden hair, a brunette bombshell, and placid eyes. _Blink:_ the bedraggled, knotted curls of a homeless woman, lips curled over empty gums.

She seemed to be cycling through them, each one for a few seconds at a time.

“This is good,” Erek said. “It means — it means she’s rebooting.”

“She’s been s-saying things,” Marco said. He was propped up on a bed next to her. His body seemed to still be misbehaving; every few seconds, some part of him twitched or jerked, resulting in the occasional stutter. “But I d-don’t think she can talk all the time, yet.”

“Lourdes,” Erek said, setting at her side. “I’m so sorry… I’m so sorry for all this.”

She flickered into an Egyptian woman, and spoke a single ancient word none of us recognized. Erek replied with another, the relief palpable in his voice.

“What’s she been saying?” I asked Marco.

“She said: ‘ _The Kandrona is dead. The Kandrona is dead, and the sun is gone.’,”_ Marco said. “Just like that — clear as day. And then the holograms started up. She’s been going like this — I don’t know, ten minutes?”

“Her speech programming is jumbled,” Erek said, examining a terminal he must have connected to the ship before I had boarded. “With enough power, her subroutines should be able to repair itself.”

“How long will that take?” I asked.

“Hours… maybe days,” Erek said. “It is difficult to know the full extent of the damage. Our bodies are resilient, but we are not indestructible.”

I stared at her. _Blink_ : she wore some flowing, Romanic garb.

“I don’t think we can wait that long,” I said. “Crayak’s on his way here. And his Howlers are already in the atmosphere.”

“I thought the Howlers were dead,” Marco said.

“Crayak made more of them, and they’re bigger and meaner,” I said, remembering the massive creatures from the pods on Ket.

“Great,” Marco muttered. “ _Super_ H-howlers…”

“Rachel’s right,” Cassie said. “We need to know what she knows about The One, or Crayak. We _don’t_ know why they’re coming here, but we know it’s not for anything good.”

She had reached out and touched Jake’s arm while she spoke; I don’t think she even realized she did it. He still hadn’t woken, or uttered a sound.

“Is there a way, Erek?” I asked. “A safe way,” I quickly added, when I saw lights along his head flash in anger. “We don’t want to hurt her. Besides — if she’s trying to talk, then she’s probably trying to tell us something.”

Erek said, slowly: “She will have recordings — they may be damaged, I don’t know. It is possible to play them back, with her permission, which she should be able to grant.”

“Cool!” Marco said. “Robot TV, channel three! Rachel, you make some popcorn, I’ll get the projector.”

*

It was shocking to see the Hork-Bajir valley again.

The light fields of grasses. The way the sun fell over it. In Lourdes’s memories, taken from the end of the war, it did not look like that. Everything was dirty, every human and alien exhausted. You could see it in the grit on their face, in the blood on their clothing. Lourdes moved among them unnoticed; she was wreathed in hologram when this was made. I caught glimpses of faces I recognized: there was Visser One — er, Marco’s mom, holding his dad. There was Loren standing next to a boy — my stomach heaved when I saw it was Tobias. There he was! Human, sandy-haired — he gleamed in the darkness, clean and newly morphed.

I wish Lourdes had lingered with her gaze, but her head turned, and her route deviated toward a more secretive part of the valley. Now she was slipping into a copse of trees, and there was Erek, emerging from a hologram in the branches. He began to speak to her, but we couldn’t hear a sound. The visual aspects had survived, but the audio was badly damaged. For the most part, we were watching in complete silence.

“This is when I ordered her into the Blade Ship,” he said. “I told her that — “

_“Jake is going to get them all killed anyway,”_ the audio cut in. He sounded disgusted and furious. _“He’ll slaughter his friends and family one by one if I don’t help him — and they’ll let him do it. But he can’t stop the Blade Ship from escaping. I need you to — “_

Silence again.

“That,” Erek said, and he looked directly in my eyes when he did. “I said that.”

“Fast forward,” I said. “Get us into the Blade Ship.”

*

Lourdes slipped into one of the vents on the aft side; it was startling how easy it was. The screen was completely dark for a few seconds, and then a circle of light appeared. She dropped down from a ceiling, having emerged in some kind of storage compartment, then opened a door and entered a long, dark hallway. She moved carefully, methodically — and she emerged onto the bridge.

“Erek, when was this taken?” Cassie asked.

“Hours before your last battle,” Erek said, as Tom stepped into view.

It was rattling to see him again, unbroken. Memories of family barbecues, picnics, reunions shuffled through my head. That man had been at my sixth birthday party at the roller rink. He’d helped Melissa Chapman learn how to roller skate.

I blinked. Now wasn’t the time to remember Yeerk evils. There were too many of those.

Tom was bent over a terminal, his face lit by the glowing screen. He was focused and intense. I looked over at Jake, and for the moment, I was glad he was unconscious. He shouldn’t see this.

“ _Narrator: Little did they know, he was planning to betray them…”_ Marco said in a spooky voice. I shot him a look.

Suddenly, a light began to blink at the edge of Tom’s terminal. He hesitated, then looked around him, but he was completely alone, and he clearly didn’t notice Lourdes. He tapped a finger on the glass.

And Crayak’s glowing red eye appeared before him.

*

_“PLOT TWIST!”_ Marco shouted, and I punched him — hard — in the shoulder. “OW!”

“This isn’t _Mystery Science Theater!”_ I snapped.

“What are they saying?” Cassie asked desperately. “We really need to know — I don’t know, Erek, can you read his lips or something?”

“I — actually, I can’t,” Erek said, sounding surprised. “I’ve never needed to do that before.”

“He’s not facing Lourdes, anyway,” I pointed out. “You can’t even see him.”

“And Crayak doesn’t have lips!” Marco exclaimed, snickering to himself. “Maybe they’re having a staring contest!”

“Tom told Jake he had bigger plans — remember?” Cassie said. “The night before this happened — when we were with Arbron and the Taxxons, and Tom and Jake were negotiating, when we agreed to help him steal the Blade Ship.”

“We — what?!” I said. I didn’t remember that — this must have been one of the pieces encrypted in the _ixcila._

“Yes — you wanted to capture Tom on the spot, remember? You wanted to hold him for three days and take Tom back, but Jake decided to use him.”

_I had wanted to save Tom?_

“We thought Tom’s Yeerk was going to establish a new Yeerk empire to enslave another race — but what if he wasn’t? What if he made _another_ deal?”

“Crayak _hated_ Jake,” Marco said, suddenly serious. “You think he reached out to Tom’s Yeerk? To get at Jake?”

“Tom’s Yeerk would have taken the bait,” Cassie said. “He was insane by the end. You remember how he was?”

“Oh yeah, that dude was nuts and bolts, all the screws loose,” Marco said.

“Did you know this?” I asked Erek. “I swear, if you held back about this — “

“No,” he looked stricken. “Lourdes was ordered — she was out of any range of contact, and we knew it would be too dangerous for her send a message from the ship. And — I’m not sure she would have known Crayak just by seeing his eye — it’s not like it’s a common sight!”

“Let’s keep going,” I said, even as the thought kept repeating in my mind: _I wanted to save Tom. I wanted to save Tom._

*

I was in the Blade Ship now.

It was Cassie who pointed me out, the growing speck hidden beneath a dashboard. I had chosen a good place to demorph; everyone was fixated on the screen, enraptured with the drama on the Pool Ship.

The sound cut in, briefly: “ _It’s our people…Sixteen thousand… maybe seventeen thousand…”_

Tom: _“It saves us the trouble of killing them ourselves.”_

_*_

Silence again. I looked around at the others. Cassie had her hands over her eyes and was peeking through her fingers, like she was sitting in the audience for a horror movie. I felt a familiar surge of disgust. I was about to watch my own death, but I didn’t cower.

_< She has seen this many more times than you,> _Jeanne said, sensing my mood. _< She was there when Jake ordered their deaths. She has watched you die over and over again. Of all of them, she came closest to escaping.>_

Of course this must be terrible for her. She had mentioned the nightmares, the therapy. My rage dissolved. Maybe Cassie was the bravest of all of us, for trying so hard to leave this sick mess in the past.

*

More audio, from Tom: _“The Pool Ship handles like a drunken Gedd at the best of times, and now look at it.”_

_“His Dracon canon is powering down. I show his reserves at — “_

The sound dropped again, but I finished the sentence: “ _Ten percent,”_ I said. This memory glittered through all the broken fragments left behind from Lourdes’s forced unlocking, for a specific reason.

“That’s when I knew I wasn’t getting out of there,” I said. It seemed almost silly now, standing in this room with my friends. It seemed impossible that at one point, I had realized, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that my life was about to end. I could look at my feelings: the surge of terror, the extinguishing of hope, and then, finally, allowing myself to be fully immersed in the well of rage inside me. Call me Rachel, call me Xena, call me a war criminal — when Tom said the Pool Ship was done, I stopped pretending to care what people thought of me. I became an Animorph with a purpose: to kill as many people on the Blade Ship before they killed me.

I looked at all of this, from far away now, and turned it over in my mind.

*

Everything happened much faster than I expected.

I heard the Controller shriek, “ _Animorph!”_ And then I saw myself as a grizzly bear barrel for Tom, tearing through the crowd. I was shot — I kept going. Claws — fur — blood — the moment was kinetic and visceral. And it’s funny, even though I _knew_ how it all was going to end, I caught myself rooting for the bear, a little piece of me wanting to see her win.

Lourdes had hidden herself well — she had an impeccable view of the action, her cameras catching the whole bloody mess. She didn’t shy away from any of it. I saw pieces of my flanks shorn off from Dracon beams or the claws of the lionesses. Tom managed to evade me at first before morphing into a cobra. _Stupid choice,_ I thought, although it occurred to me that this may have been the only real battle morph Tom’s Yeerk had acquired. On the screen, I saw the bear ( _that’s ME,_ I had to remind myself) lift its head — it had seen the snake. I was going for it now. I was going to fulfill my mission — killing my cousin at the order of his brother.

Suddenly it all seemed far too serious. I turned to Marco. “Make a joke,” I said.

“Huh?”

“Make a joke — make one right now. Just say something stupid. I don’t care.”

_“And in the left corner we’ve got RACHEL, the CLAWWWWWWW,”_ Marco intoned loudly, throwing his voice with the reverb of a wrestling announcer. “ _And there’s Tom — the COBRA BERENSON — striking from the left!_ ”

The stupid snake, latching onto my arm.

“ _Oooo, that_ had _to hurt! Rachel’s mad folks, we’ve seen her like this before — she’s picking up the snake! Oh no, she’s not going to let this one go! She picks it up — she BITES DOWN!”_

“You can stop now,” I whispered.

“Good,” Marco muttered. He covered his face with his hands.

*

I killed Tom, and then I demorphed, and then a polar bear mauled me to death.

And that was that. Except —

_— except that at the moment of the polar bear’s blow, there was a flash of light that came from where I stood._

“What was that?” I said, suddenly alert. “Erek — pause it.”

“Let’s not, Rachel,” Cassie said. “Please.”

“No — I’m not — look, right there!”

“ _Enhance!”_ Marco said, dramatically, but he sounded sick.

“I’m not kidding — you see that? That flash of blue? That’s from the Ellimist.” It happened so quickly, it was almost impossible to see. “He stopped time — or whatever it is — the instant I died. That’s when he talked to me.”

*

“It seems as if that burst of light is the only indication of the Ellimist,” Erek said calmly. “I’d like to move on.”

“Yeah,” I said, feeling the adrenaline flow out of me. “Yeah, okay.”

I was dead now. I was just one of the battered bodies on the bridge of the Blade Ship, left floating in zero gravity, ignored, while the crew scrambled.

And Lourdes was moving forward.

It didn’t take her long to harvest my _ixcila._ She lowered her hand and touched it against my forehead. A few tiny yellow sparks burst from just above my nose into her fingertips. The entire process took maybe 30 seconds.

_Why did she do it?_ I wondered. She had watched me slaughter these controllers. She knew I was no innocent. It was too late to save Tom — he had died as a snake. But why me? Why none of the other controllers that had died around me?

I fixated my eyes on the silent Chee, her body making small mechanical noises.

_Why did she save me?_

_*_

They cut off the connection to the Pool Ship first, and everyone demorphed. The Polar Bear turned out to be a boy from my ninth-grade English class. He’d sat two rows to my left, and one time he’d been busted for listening to a heavy metal CD with a headphones cable snaked through his hoodie’s sleeve. I couldn’t remember his human name.

The Polar Bear seemed to assume leadership, moving his arms and typing a series of codes into the bridge’s computers. And then, shortly, the Earth and the Pool Ship vanished from our main view, replaced by the darkness of space.

*

The Yeerks remaining were not well organized.

Even though we couldn’t hear them, that much was painfully obvious. The first thing they tried to do was clear the corpses from the bridge, and even that they couldn’t do quickly. There was a heated argument over my body, but in the end, they lifted it onto a cart and jettisoned it with the rest of the dead. _Bye bye_ , I thought.

The Polar Bear took us into Zero space after that. Inside, they continued to argue. Bits of their conversations came through: _“—coordinates could be inaccurate, he was raving before we left—“ “—the wrong system, didn’t you—“ “—Kandrona rations aren’t infinite—“_

They came out of Z-space, and went back in. Each time, they seemed more agitated, but we couldn’t understand why. Why did they look at the Polar Bear Yeerk so murderously? Why did he looked so panicked, when he thought no one was watching?

It was Ax who answered, feebly, from the corner where he lay: <They’re lost.>

“Ax man! Where ya been?” Marco said joyfully. He flung his legs over the side of his bed and promptly collapsed to the floor. “Getting real tired of this,” he grumbled.

<I’ve been awake for a while,> Ax said. <I merely — it took a while for me to coordinate my thought-speech correctly. That thing…> He made a sound in his head that sounded like disgust. <My mind is free, but I feel The One all over my body.>

“We got pureed and blended _up!_ ” Marco said. “Still feels like it too. It’s getting easier though. I think.”

“They’re lost?” Cassie asked.

<Yes. I’ve been catching glimpses of the coordinates on their screens, and also watching the skies when they drop into normal space. They are not following the course they are setting. That seems to be causing them considerable distress.>

“Polar Bear’s not gonna last much longer unless they figure it out,” Marco said. Then he added, almost thoughtfully, “I copied his paper in math, once.”

*

And then, almost on cue, the Polar Bear Yeerk was murdered. It was a Hork-Bajir Controller that killed him.

_Thwack!_ One swipe of a blade, and our former classmate was cut down, a squiggling, struggling Yeerk slipping out of his ear. The Hork-Bajir stepped on it, crunching it, and both the Yeerk sludge and the body were jettisoned like I had been.

*

The next time they dropped into normal space, they were in a galaxy that had a very large, very bright sun at the center of it. It was immediately clear that this was _not_ where they were supposed to be, as the entire inside of the bridge was lit up so brightly, so quickly, it took a minute for the shields to adjust.

The Hork-Bajir Controller looked shocked and confused; the other Yeerks were _furious_. They quickly went back into Zero Space, but already we could see the mutiny playing out again: the whispers, the evil glances, the nervousness of the Hork-Bajir. When they emerged — again into the sun-filled galaxy — he was thrown alive out the airlock.

Another human, a redhead, took charge now — and she lasted until the next drop into normal space, which ended in the same place it started.

“I don’t understand,” Erek said, frowning. “They’re going in circles. They can’t be making the same mistakes over and over.”

*

Lourdes, to her credit, tried her hardest to send a message to Erek. Whenever the bridge was empty — which wasn’t often — she would commandeer the equipment. But nothing she did ever seemed to work. Any frequency, any communication — it all failed. Sometimes, they seemed to go out — but every time, they bounced back, little red notifications she had to quickly delete lest they lead to her discovery.

She must have tried a hundred times, in all.

*

No one wanted to plot a course of action, and the tension between all of them seemed to be increasing.

<Their body masses appear to be diminishing,> Ax said. <I would guess they are low on rations for their host bodies.>

“They’re _starving_ ,” Cassie said, low horror in her voice. “Look — I didn’t notice it before, but their clothes are staring to hang off them.”

“They’re looking for food,” I said, as the truth dawned on me. “But every time they come out of Zero Space — they’re right here.”

*

The things that happened next — the slow descent into madness — were impossible to watch. I kept averting my eyes, reminded myself that _I needed to see this._ Any part of this story could be important. Any one thing could be the thing that saved our lives now.

But after a while, and even knowing that they had been my fiercest enemies, it was difficult to watch the misery of the Yeerks.

They _were_ running out of food. They began to eat anything. The leather upholstery vanished. Rubber disappeared from doors. Once, the audio came back in for a moment during a horrifying conversation where a group of Controllers tried to convince a morph-capable one to become some kind of animal, so they could — but, thankfully, the audio cut out.

And every time they came out of Z-space, there was that huge, blistering sun.

*

The worst things happened on their last day in Z-space.

By then, none of them would look at each other anymore. They moved sluggishly, their host bodies weak. Every three days, the Yeerks would return to their portable Kandrona, tucked in the back of the Blade Ship.

But on the last day, there was a commotion. Lourdes left the bridge, following a small crowd of Controllers, who looked more alert than they had been in weeks. They shoved each other in their mad rush, driven by panic.

She made it to the back of the ship, and she saw what had agitated them so much: the Kandrona, obliterated, and the Yeerk Pool gouged, the last of its fluid spilling onto the deck.

In the center of it stood a middle-aged man, laughing uncontrollably. He had clearly lost his mind.

_“THE KANDRONA IS DEAD!”_ He suddenly shrieked as the audio burst in, causing all of us to jump.

“You fool,” another Controller said, raising a Dracon beam. “You idiot.”

He tried to fire, but too many other Controllers were jostling him to get at the liquid spilling out. Yeerks slipped out of ears in the diminishing pool, absorbing the last of their rays. The humans that gained freedom began to smash with fists and hands; the armed Controller’s shot went wild and splattered a Hork Bajir across the wall. The laughing man in the pool was overwhelmed by the jostling, feeble bodies.

It was the most horrible thing I had ever seen.

Lourdes backed away from it, and for once I _wished_ the sound would cut out; but now we could hear her running away, back the corridor toward the bridge.

She emerged just as the Blade Ship dropped out of Z-space.

But this time — something was different. The bridge was completely shadowed.

She looked up, and I saw the underside of something covered in mechanical valleys, sheathed in little red lights that flickered and blinked. It was so massive, it blocked out the stars.

Crayak’s ship.

_“The Kandrona is dead, and the sun is gone,”_  Lourdes whispered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ch. 14 of Book #53 is critical to this chapter, for anyone doing a re-read.
> 
> Next chapter to be released Tuesday, Dec. 4 at 9 p.m. ET.


	36. The One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The side effects of being recanted become horrifyingly apparent.

“Stop,” Cassie said. “I know we need to see it all, but _Jesus._ I need a _minute._ ”

Erek paused video and hid the shimmering screen. “I agree,” he said, and he looked down at Lourdes, who was currently in her film star persona, dressed to the nines and ready for the red carpet. “This can’t be easy for her, either.”

“Ax man, how’re you feeling?” Marco said. He was standing now, leaning against the wall, still clearly struggling with his twitching limbs. “I got the shakes, man. It’s like I’m jonesing, but I’m not jonesing.”

<Joan… Sing? Is this a famous Earth woman I should know?>

“Nah, it’s like when you really, _really_ want a cup of coffee in the morning,” Marco said. “You say: I’m _jonesing_ for a coffee.”

<Ah. I see,> Ax said.

My mind was reeling from what we had just watched.

“Crayak,” I said. “That had to have been Crayak, keeping them from getting anywhere. He somehow bent Z-space so they were trapped in one place.”

“Duhhh,” Marco said. “I bet he was mad when Tom didn’t show up. All that schlepping across the universe, and he didn’t even get his prize.”

“Crayak would really go that far?” Cassie said, shock in her voice. “All this… he’d put them through all of this for revenge against a 16-year old boy?”

She was staring intently at Jake, who still hadn’t moved or uttered a word. His eyes were closed. I could _feel_ her anxiety, and it was a struggle to not let it seep into me. If I did, I would start thinking about Tobias, not just trapped as a hawk, but _really_ a hawk, and I would go as insane as that Yeerk above the broken Kandrona.

“Crayak and the Ellimist — they don’t operate on our timelines,” I said. “Heck, they don’t even operate on Chee timelines. They play their games, and they plan moves that last for thousands of years — hundreds of thousands of years. We interfered with Crayak’s moves, so… maybe?”

“You’re saying Cyclops got mad because we got the triple-word _and_ the double-letter score on oxyphenbutazone?” Marco asked.

“Oxyphen — what now?”

“It’s a really high scoring word,” Marco said, suddenly sounding defensive.

“When did you become a _Scrabble_ geek _?”_ Cassie asked.

“Nora and I used to play it,” Marco grumbled. “I got competitive.”

“I don’t believe it,” I said, in mock horror. “Cassie… he’s still _one of them!”_

“Not funny,” Marco said, shooting me a look. “You don’t know what it’s like — to have that thing in your head.”

“I think Rachel’s right,” Erek said suddenly, and Marco’s jaw dropped. “Not that you’re still part of The One. I think Crayak is still angry that his plans were thrown off course. And if he is so particular as to the rules of his game, it would seem that luring Tom to his ship was within the scope of his influence.”

“But it wasn’t our fault that Crayak’s plans were disrupted,” Cassie said, frowning. “We wouldn’t have gotten involved with him at all if it wasn’t for the Ellimist’s interference.”

“Or lack of it,” I said, sighing. “And besides — he wouldn’t care whether or not the Ellimist were involved. Their whole deal is to make one, tiny move and see if more people live or die because of it. Maybe by bringing in Tom, he thought he could kill us, eventually. Maybe this whole thing _was_ his plan, and it’s still playing out, somehow.”

No one said anything for almost a full minute.

<Excuse me, but do we have any food?> Ax said. <A Cinnabon, perhaps? You might say that I’m… jonesing.>

“All right, Ax man!” Marco said. He raised his hand to give a high five.

“No,” Cassie said. “I can’t believe that Crayak planned _all of this._ He could’ve guessed that Tom’s Yeerk was interested in betraying everyone else, sure. We guessed that. But he couldn’t have known that Rachel would be on board, and it’s even less likely that he could have known about Lourdes — “

“ _Ax man!”_

The terror in Marco’s voice cut through the air. I turned away from Cassie and saw something horrifying: Marco and Ax’s hands, raised to meet each other, were being woven around with thick black tendrils emanating from their wrists. It was coiling around their fingers and slipping slowly toward their elbows.

Marco was shrieking, and Ax raised his tail. He tried to strike, but his blow went awry, nearly taking off Marco’s head.

“Ax, don’t!” I yelled, as all of us ran to them. Erek actually grabbed Ax’s tail by the flat of the blade, which I would never recommend in a million years.

“Marco, chill out!” Cassie snapped.

“I’M CHILL!” Marco yelped.

Up close, I could see that the tendrils had pushed themselves out of small round holes along the side of Marco’s palm. Those hadn’t been there a few minutes ago — we would have seen them. Ax had the same tendrils pushing out from openings along his hand; they were coiling around each other, locking their fingers together.

“Listen, it’s not — they’re just winding around each other, look,” I said, reaching down to unwind one.

“Rachel!” Cassie said sharply. “Don’t touch it!”

“Unless you have rubber gloves handy, I have to,” I snapped.

“Just —“ she looked around, then abruptly lifted her foot and yanked off her shoe. “Here,” she said, handing me her sock. “Use this. It’s _something_.”

I slipped my hand into Cassie’s sock and tentatively touched one of the tendrils around Ax’s wrist. It quivered under my grasp, but it didn’t respond. Breathing hard, I pulled the tendril back and began to unwrap it, carefully separating it from Marco’s hand.

“Both of you, pull back,” I told them. “These things are like… magnetically attracted, I think.”

<That’s not possible,> Ax said. <The polarity structure wouldn’t — >

“Just back up,” I said.

Slowly, little by little, I unwound the strange material from their arms. It took several minutes, but I knew we were going to be okay when, upon getting some space between them, the tendrils flopped back onto their forearms and were absorbed into their skin.

Finally, Marco stepped back, his whole body shaking, and flopped down on the floor.

“It’s still in me,” he whispered. “I knew it. It never goes away.”

<Marco is correct,> Ax said, sounding shocked. <This must be some side effect of The One. It no longer has control over our thoughts, but our biology has been altered. When Marco and I touched, it must have triggered some mechanism to be united.>

“Whatever either of you do, don’t touch Jake or Tobias,” Erek said. “I suspect the same effect would happen with either of them.”

“ _Man_ ,” Marco said, stepping away. “I thought this was _over_. I thought we _got away_.”

“How did The One operate?” Cassie asked. “I know this is hard, but maybe there’s something there. Some clue. Some medical treatment.” She looked at Ax. “You were the first to encounter it, right?”

<Yes,> Ax said. <Myself and a small group of Andalites were the first to be… assimilated.

<I believe they are all dead now,> he said, after a moment. <That is how The One most often operated. It preferred to absorb every one, kill them, and retain their memories as part of itself, and sometimes in a construct, used for deception purposes.>

“Construct?” Cassie asked.

_< Like me,> _Jeanne piped up.

<I have never heard of a creature like The One. It is capable of retaining the memories of those it kills and holding them interminably. It can resuscitate the original body, at a distance from itself, which it can then use for deception.>

“Menderash,” Marco grunted. “That’s how they finally got us. We weren’t doing _great_ in the Blade Ship after we smacked it, but we were at least evading them. Then we heard Menderash doing a _help-me-I’m-lost-and-confused_ bit. Santorelli went to help him, and — “ Marco shuddered and pointed to his arm. “It was those black things, but they were everywhere, and much faster than this. We couldn’t help him.”

<Though the mental connection is gone, the physical connection seems to persist,> Ax said, sadly. <We are no longer a danger to others, but I fear that any proximity to the formerly recanted will result in something similar to what we just experienced.>

“How deep down does it go?” Cassie asked.

<Cellular, I suspect. If our bodies are capable of shifting and changing in such a fluid way — >

“Do you think it’s affected your DNA?”

No one said anything for a second, and then there was only the sounds of shifting and crunching bone and flesh, as a boy became a gorilla, and an alien became human.

*

I forgot how _long_ it takes to morph — it always seemed so fast in the battles, but we spent a _lot_ of time finding good spots to hide. Cassie was always the fastest, zipping through the change in about a minute and a half, but I never got faster than two minutes, and sometimes three if I was having a bad day.

It took Ax _five minutes_ to become human, and Marco six. I wanted to ask what the hold up was, but even in Marco’s stretched and warped face, I could see he was under a tremendous amount of strain.

And finally they stood there: A blinking, oddly-attractive thirteen-year-old with the genes of the Animorphs, and a silverback gorilla.

<Big Jim in the _house!_ > Marco said. <Now this is more like it!>

“I do n-not s-s-sense The O-One,” Ax said, sounding so much younger in this morph than I remembered him ever being. “It’s influence does not seem to extend to these f-f-f-forms.”

<Come on guys! You said there’s jungle around here? I wanna catch some _VINES! >_

“Morph back,” Cassie said. “We need to know if it’s fixed in your human forms.”

Neither Ax nor Marco looked very excited to do that.

“Do you want to be stuck as a gorilla forever?” I asked.

<I’d prefer it to _that,_ > Marco grumbled, but I saw that his hairline, hilariously, had begun to recede as he demorphed.

Ax followed suit, his centaur-like back stretching behind him, wobbling, but not quite falling as his balance recalibrated.

“How’s it going?” Cassie asked, a minute in.

<Better,> Marco said. <It’s not nearly so hard to morph now. Easier to concen —>

The thought-speak gave out as his human face fully formed, and the last of his bones clicked into place.

“Whew!” Marco said. “What a ride!”

“Well?” I asked. “Do you still feel it?”

He lifted up his palms, turned them over. “No… No, I don’t think so. Ax?”

<I am feeling… myself again.>

Marco looked at Ax, and stuck out his hand in a fist. All of us held our breath. Ax reached out, and, instead of the fist bump Marco was clearly trying to exchange, grasped it fully with his tiny Andalite hands.

No tendrils. No scary black ooze.

“I _love_ me some morphing,” Marco whispered. “I’m… I’m me again.”

And then Marco did a very unMarco-like thing. He dropped to the floor, leaned against the wall, and he began to sob.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For hardcore fans, by a hardcore fan.
> 
> Next chapter to be released Thursday, Dec. 6 at 9 p.m. ET.
> 
> On a side-note, my writing has slowed a little bit (mostly because the chapters seem to be getting longer). I'm still eight chapters ahead, but still committed to the release-every-two-days rule. All your hits and comments give me life!
> 
> Check me out on twitter, too: @mdxwriter. Cinnabon even followed me so that was cool.


	37. ...and the sun is gone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lourdes finishes her terrifying tale.

Cassie looked overwhelmed. She backed up and looked down at Jake, staring at him intently. I could guess what she was thinking, because I was thinking the same thing about Tobias: she was mentally _willing_ him to morph.

Of all people, _I_ was the one to comfort Marco. He looked so pathetic, sitting there, face full of snot and tears. So I went over, sat beside him, and he cried into my shoulder for a full minute.

“Maybe we won’t talk about this part on Leno,” I said.

“You’re gonna join me on Leno?” He asked, wiping his face. “Did you hear my lobster bit?”

“Please, I heard you tell that story a hundred times. Every time, the tank got deeper and the lady stirring the pot gets hotter.”

“Smokin’,” Marco said. Then he paused, and gently pushed me away. “When did you get so touchy-feely?”

“I died,” I said dryly. “Try it sometime.”

He laughed, and we both got to our feet. “Thanks, Rach,” he said quietly.

“You okay, Ax?” I asked.

<I am very well,> Ax said slowly. <The feeling is… overwhelming. I can understand the depth of Marco’s emotion.>

“Jake, if you can hear me… please morph,” Cassie pleaded.

He didn’t respond.

“Cassie —“ Marco started to say, then he hesitated. “Jake — Jake didn’t go through the same things we did. After The One caught us, but before we were recanted — he was brought to Crayak’s ship for a while. We don’t know what happened to him there. He came out like this, and the only time he ever spoke was when he was being controlled.”

“Okay,” Cassie said. She was nodding deliberately. “It doesn’t mean he’s lost. It just means — it just means we don’t know everything yet.” She looked at Erek. “Can we keep going? With Lourdes’s story. If she’s ready.”

*

The Super Howlers came next.

They stood on two legs, thicker than the ones I remembered, and taller, with wrapping, coiled muscles. They had those same robins-egg blue eyes, almost beautiful against the molten flesh. The Yeerks didn’t even try to fight them; they just stared, in abject, exhausted horror, as the Blade Ship was swallowed by Crayak’s Death Star.

The Howlers didn’t kill them; they led them, one by one, out of the ship, until Lourdes was alone on the Blade Ship. She paced the ship in a panic, clearly frightened and confused.

But her isolation ended when the Drode boarded the ship. And her hologram did not fool him for long.

“A pleasant surprise,” he said to her, the neon corners of his mouth curling up into that vicious smile.

*

She was tortured.

Not in a conventional way — you can’t do that to a Chee. They don’t have toenails you can pull, and I’m pretty sure if you stretched them over a rack, they’d just end up with a few loose wires. No, Crayak did something far crueler — he forced her to relive the worst moments of her long, long life, in a humiliating and public fashion.

They took her into an enormous, cathedral-like space inside Crayak’s ship. Great pillars rose up to support a roof we couldn’t see, and it was filled with hundreds of alien species, each one more bizarre than the last. They forced her into the center of it, hooked her to dozens of cables, and broadcast her memories for all to see.

They started with the murder of the Pemalites.

The Howlers squealed high-pitched, shrieking yelps as they watched their earlier versions massacre a race. They were clearly entertained by the violence, which was graphic and terrible. And Lourdes just watched it all, unable to do nothing.

“This is inside your _head?_ ” Cassie said to Erek. “All the time?”

“Yes,” Erek said, stone-faced. “We cannot forget it. We cannot process it. It sits, and it spins through our drives, over and over and over. It will be with us until our circuits dissolve.”

It did not take the Howlers long to kill the Pemalites, and what followed was memories of Lourdes’s time on Earth, and then for what came after, including the Blade Ship. Every minute of it was streamed, just as we were watching it now. The worst memories they made her relive over, and over, and over. The Drode seemed to take a personal satisfaction in my death, forcing Lourdes to replay it dozens of times. Eventually, the Drode brought her to Crayak’s chamber, where she would be destroyed.

And there he was: that great, menacing red eye atop massive, unformed limbs. In her memories, Crayak was enormous and hulking and terrifying. He commanded her to play my death one last time, and so she fired it up, and there I was. I was lifting the snake, I was biting down, I was demorphing. The polar bear was raising a paw —

_Flash_.

And then the screen froze. Crayak was leaning forward in eager anticipation.

_A SURPRISE_ , he said. They came through clear, and loud, and booming, even in the memory. _SO HE CAME TO RACHEL AT THE MOMENT OF HER DEATH… WHAT DID HE SHOW HER, I WONDER?_

_*_

The implications were racing through my head. He knew the Ellimist had reached out to me — he would have known that she had made an _ixcila._ It would not have been possible to access it within her— but he must have tried. He _had_ to have.

_What would he have found?_

The next image that showed up was blurry and indistinct. It was something blue — an ocean? — with reddish patterns scattered throughout. Sometimes you could see movement, other times, nothing —

_AH, KET_ , came the voice of Crayak, warbling in on the edges of the memory. _HOW I WISH —_ The audio dropped out again.

“Oh my God,” I whispered, my eyes widening. “This — this isn’t Lourdes’s memory — it’s the _Ellimist’s._ The one in my head. The one in the _ixcila._ ”

“I thought the _ixcila_ was encrypted,” Cassie said, looking at Erek.

“It was,” Erek replied. “Heavily — that being said, we don’t know what technology Crayak was applying.”

“You got _hacked_ ,” Marco said, wagging a finger at me.

<Not very well, though,> Ax said. <The quality is terrible. I do not see what useful information Crayak could have gleaned from this lens.>

“She’s jumping ahead in time,” Erek said. The screen wavered, blurred — and suddenly we were all at the bottom of an ocean, surrounded by grimy tentacles.

“This was Father’s moon,” I said to everyone. “It’s hard to see, but — those are corpses around us. This is how Father kept his captives — he would skewer the dead bodies and absorb their consciousnesses. Toomin was the only one he kept alive… out of sheer boredom.”

The water rippled around us, the tentacles shifted. They blurred in and out.

Suddenly, the view shifted. We were still underwater, the tentacles drifting lazily.

“We just saw this,” Cassie said, slowly.

“Yes,” Erek was frowning. “She’s repeating it.”

“The Ellimist was part of Father for a long time,” I said. “Maybe a century, maybe longer.”

A blip, more of the ocean.

“Why is she showing us this again?” Cassie asked.

<I believe she is trying to tell us something,> Ax said.

“I think I know,” Marco said quietly. “That thing — Father. It’s capable of absorbing dead folks into it and propping them up, right? It’s also capable of controlling them, to a degree. Sound like anything we know?”

_< It can also be overwhelmed by a more powerful mind,> _Jeanne said inside my head. _< As the Ellimist rescued his companions from Father, so you rescued me.>_

“Oh my God,” I said, the truth finally coming clear. “Crayak created The One — and he modeled it after this — this thing from the Ellimist’s memories. That’s why it’s so similar to Father.”

“But it’s different, too,” Cassie pointed out. “The thing here — Father — it needs to be connected to its victims.”

“It’s like the Super Howlers,” Erek said. “He’s created something worse, something more vile.”

“And he got the idea from me,” I whispered.

*

“Okay,” Cassie was saying. “So Crayak digs out some of the Ellimist’s memories from inside the _ixcila_ from inside of Lourdes. But then, for some reason, he builds another body for Rachel and implanting her mind in it. _Why?_ If he got everything the first time around, why go to the trouble?”

“Because he didn’t get everything,” Erek said. “Not all of the encryption could be broken. They _needed_ a fully-functioning, implanted _ixcila_ in order to unlock the rest of it.”

“Right,” Cassie said. “But still —  _why?_ What were they looking for?” She sighed, frustrated. “I just feel like — if we knew that, we’d know everything.”

*

The image of the underwater graveyard flickered and vanished. Now Lourdes was inside of a tube. Outside, the Drode was watching.

“A shame that your biology — or lack of it — prevents you from being truly recanted into the service of my master,” the Drode said, and this audio was crystal clear. “Already, we are recanting any sentient species who’s alliance to Crayak has always been — shall we say, _conditional_ on their compliance. But they will all serve us now, unquestionably. _Slavishly_. A pity you cannot.”

The neon green lips split into that wicked smile. “But you’ll have your use yet, when the time comes.”

The liquid burbled, and then the video cut to black.

*

“That’s all there is,” Erek said quietly.

“They couldn’t get her,” Cassie said. “After all that — after building a monster from her memory — they couldn’t recant her into it, like they did to Jake.”

“I guess there’s some perks to being a robot,” I said.

<Unfortunately, I’m not sure I see any acquired advantage,> Ax said. <We have answered some questions, but Crayak’s true motivation remains a mystery. What goal would the recreation of Father and the resurrection of Rachel help him achieve?>

No one said anything for about thirty seconds, as we all tried to think and came up short.

Marco cleared his throat.

“So, uh, I think I know a way to help Jake,” he said, and he pointed at Cassie. “But you’re _really_ not going to like it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For hardcore fans, by a hardcore fan.
> 
> Next chapter to be released Saturday, Dec. 8, 9 p.m. ET.
> 
> (I'll have just run a marathon, so hopefully I'll be awake to post!)


	38. Saving Jake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassie has to do the unthinkable to save Jake.

“ _Absolutely_ not!” Cassie nearly shouted. “Are you out of your _mind?!_ ”

“I’m not saying it’s a _good_ idea,” Marco said. “I’m saying it’s _an_ idea.”

“It would be — God, the _violation_ ,” Cassie roared. “He can’t give consent — he would _freak out_.”

<Cassie, I understand more than most your hesitation,> Ax said. <There are Andalites who would choose death before infestation.>

“ _See?”_ Cassie said, pointing at Ax. “He gets how messed up this is! He sees why —“

<But you are human, not Andalite,> Ax said. <And I — I would very much like to speak with Prince Jake again. I regret that we lost touch, after the war.>

All of the breath went out of Cassie then. She looked at me, pleadingly.

“He’s strong, Cassie,” was all I could say. I didn’t want her to know that I was breaking apart on the inside. This wouldn’t save Tobias. “And you’re the only one with a Yeerk morph.”

What Marco had suggested, as unpleasant as it might be, would work. I knew as soon as he said it — there it was, that clear, shining path from Point A to Point B. 

If Cassie became a Yeerk, and she infested Jake, she could force him to morph.

“What about _me?”_ Cassie was spluttering. “Do we even _know_ what happens when a Yeerk morphs inside something? I could be crushed inside his head —“

“Tom’s Yeerk was able to do it,” I said quietly. “He turned into that snake, remember?”

“I — “ she finally sat down, looking from Jake, and back to the rest of us, shaking her head the whole time. “It’s such an _invasion_ of privacy… what if he comes to, and I’m in there? I — I might not be able to stop myself from seeing his thoughts — the entirely Yeerk biology revolves around total control as quickly as possible.”

“Find out if he secretly feels inferior to his wittier, more good-looking friend,” Marco said casually, and Cassie leaped to her feet, bristling — _actually_ bristling, because wolf fur was sprouting along her shoulders.

“This isn’t funny,” she (literally) snarled. “I have to go inside the mind of my friend slash ex-crush slash former soldier. And it _freaks me out_.”

“Okay, Cassie — deep breaths,” I said. “You don’t have to do this.”

“Yes, I do,” she snapped, her face demorphing fully back to human. “I’m not losing him again, not if there’s a chance.” She exhaled. “This _sucks.”_

*

While Cassie psyched herself up to do the unthinkable, I tried to keep myself from dissolving into a sobbing wreck right there on the floor. Jake had a real shot — if all we had to do was make him morph, we could do that, Cassie’s discomfort aside.

But Tobias was a red-tailed hawk. His ear canals were too small for infestation. When Marco had said he’d thought of a solution — I had hoped, for the brief instant between when he spoke again — that it might have worked on Tobias, too. But a hawk couldn’t be infested, and a hawk couldn’t be communicated with.

If his human mind was truly buried beneath the hawks, he was lost forever.

*

“All right,” Cassie grumbled. “I’m beginning the morph.”

Almost immediately her body was covered in a thick, viscous slime. It crept into her mouth, over her eyes.

“ _Moisturizer!”_ Marco crowed suddenly. “ _Twenty-percent off all moisturizer, get ‘em while they’re hot!”_

Her arms adhered to her sides and became glued to her body. She slumped forward, shrinking quickly. When it came to morphing, Cassie was truly an _estreen_ — but even she couldn’t make this one look remotely attractive. Her eyes vanished, then her ears — her legs became the back end of a body, fused together.

And then there she was: Cassie the Yeerk.

<I’m _done_ ,> she muttered. <I can’t see or hear anything, so go ahead and… let’s get this done. _Ugh_. >

I picked her up, as gently as I could.

<I’m moving,> Cassie said. <Just — just go ahead and slip me in the ear. The Yeerk knows what to do.>

I brought her down next to Jake’s head.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered to him. Then I held Cassie out so her small antennae could feel the shell-shaped edges of his ear canal. The little Yeerk in my hands responded, pulling itself forward eagerly.

<Don’t mind me, I’m just Cassie, on my way to infest my sort-of-ex-boyfriend,> she grumbled, in thought-speak only directed to me. <Just another day of my super normal life… oh man, the Yeerk mind is _excited_ about this. >

She disappeared into Jake’s head.

<Okay… I’m inside,> Cassie said, this time to the entire room. <He’s — it’s strange in here. The neural connections are present, but they’re resistant to me… No, not resistant… it’s like they’re dulled over, somehow.>

Jakes arm popped up suddenly, nearly hitting me. I jumped backward.

<Did I do something?> Cassie asked.

“Yeah, you almost — “

<Wait, I can’t hear you, yet. Working on that now. It’s so weird in here. It’s like I’m reaching through a fluid to control things. Like trying to pull your arms through water in a pool. It’s possible, but —>

“You don’t know how hard to pull,” Marco said. He was nodding. “That’s what it feels like, when it’s got control of your body like that.” He shuddered.

<Hey! Hey someone say something!>

“Jake’s deepest darkest secrets,” Marco said, without missing a beat. I punched him.

<Still not funny. Okay, I can hear you.>

“Is Jake in there?” Erek asked.

<Yeah — I think so. He’s not responding to me. I’m worried about pulling on his neural network too much. I might overdo it.> She paused. <It’s like he’s… buried inside something. I can’t get through it.>

Ax chimed in. <Are you able to trigger the morphing process?>

<I think so…>

There was a long, suspenseful pause, where we all stared transfixed at Jake.

<Is anything happening? I’m concentrating as hard as I can!>

“No,” I said, the air coming out of me. “Nothing —“

“There!” Marco almost shouted.

Fuzzy orange fur was sprouting from the top of Jake’s hands.

*

“It’s working — Cassie, it’s working!” Marco yelled.

<Okay! Yeah, it’s getting easier, now. Geez this is weird. I can feel his brain _morphing_ around me. >

Claws slid out of Jake’s knuckles, wolverine style. I wondered, suddenly, if Cassie’s _estreen_ abilities could manifest themselves here? If she was controlling Jake’s morph, was he a better morpher?

It didn’t matter — he was changing more quickly now, his bones rearranging, his face deforming into that of a jungle cat.

<It occurs to me that Cassie has never morphed a tiger before,> Ax said. <Perhaps we should give her some space, if the tiger mind manifests itself.>

*

We backed away quickly, with Erek between us and Jake. If our Cassie-infested friend did briefly succumb to the predatory mind, we hoped that Erek could hold him back long enough for her to reassert herself.

<I’m completing the morph!> Cassie was saying triumphantly. <I —>

She cut out, suddenly, and we saw a fully grown tiger standing in front of us, blinking uneasily. It flopped over suddenly, backing against the wall, licking its lips and looking, for all intents and purposes, very hungry.

“Hey Cassie, are you about to make us into a snack?” Marco asked.

<What? Oh… no, sorry, I’m in full control.> Cassie said, and we all sighed with relief. <It’s just… oh, this feels _so_ much better. I don’t feel any of that stuff there — and this tiger _rocks_. >

“Is Jake there?”

<Sort of…> she said, hesitantly. <I think… I think he’s in a daze. I’m afraid to try and communicate with him. I’m going to try and morph out, now.>

The tiger’s fur shimmered and began to vanish.

<Okay, Jake’s here!> Cassie said, triumphantly. <I’m trying to — _oh my God. >_

“What is it?” I said sharply. “What’s happening?”

_<_ I’m getting access to his mind!> She was panicking. <It’s opening up — I can’t shut it off! I don’t know how to!>

One of Jake’s half-human/half-tiger legs kicked to the left. <He’s _freaking_ out about being infested! Jake, Jake calm down, it’s me, I’m not going to hurt you! >

“Hey Jake, it’s just Cassie,” Marco was saying as Jake demorphed. “I know infestation is something you feel strongly about, but it’s okay man, it’s okay!”

<Wait. It’s not just me,> Cassie said suddenly. <It’s something else. He’s afraid —>

She broke off into silence as the morph slowed, then sped up. Jake was nearly finished returning to normal.

<Oh my God,> Cassie said. <Jake knows why Crayak is coming. And it’s _bad_ — it’s so bad — GET ME OUT OF HERE! >

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I finished the marathon! Ran too fast to start, so the last few miles were... a little rough, haha. But I managed to get a chapter ready for ya'll!
> 
> Oh, and I never figured out if KA ever established rules for Yeerks morphing inside other creature's heads, just inferred that it would work because of the last couple books (even if it doesn't really make any sense to me how that would work... do both the Yeerk and the host have to have the power to morph to make this work? Maybe this is one of those Animorphs things that's good to just not pay much attention to). In any case, I tried to at least make sure it's consistent with canon!
> 
> Next chapter to be released Monday, Dec. 10, 9 p.m. ET.


	39. Crayak's Intentions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Animorphs begin to understand why Crayak is coming to Ket.

**** Erek held Jake’s shoulders down, and Marco and I held his legs. Ax collected Cassie as she slithered out from Jake’s ear, leaving a small trail of slime; he shivered with disgust.

<Am I out? I’m OUT!> She shouted, and she began to demorph almost immediately. This caused Ax to nearly drop her as her Yeerk body began to expand. 

<I am NEVER doing this morph again, I don’t care who —> her speech dissolved into nothing as she became human.

Jake began to fight against us as soon as Cassie relinquished control.

“AHHH!” He shouted. “AHHH! Get it out of me! Ahhh-hAAAAA!”

“Jake, my man — it’s us, we’ve got you.”

“M-Marco?”

<Prince Jake, we are rescued. We are _safe_. >

“Ax?” His eyes suddenly snapped open, like they had remembered how to see. “ _Erek?!”_

“Hello, Jake,” Erek said.

“Let go of me,” he said, and Erek released him. Marco and I stepped back, and Jake tried to stand before quickly dropping to the ground.

“Easy, Jake,” Marco said. “It takes a bit to get used to.”

“Cassie?” He said, looking around us. “Where’s Cassie? I — I could have sworn that she was…”

He saw the hulking Yeerk/human, and his eyes widened. Cassie’s face appeared, distorted by the alien flesh, then settled into herself as the morph finished.

“I’m sorry, Jake,” she said, as the last bits of slime evaporated from her skin. “It was the only way to help.” She opened her mouth to say more, closed it, looked away.

Jake turned to me, raising a hand.

“ _Rachel_ ,” he whispered. “I remember… I remember you. We talked, didn’t we?”

“Yes,” I said, relief coursing through me.

His face contorted into a grimace. “I was trying to tell you… about… something…”

“The _Rachel_ ,” I said, smiling. “You were trying to tell me about the ship. It worked, Jake. We’re on her — right now.”

“Oh, good,” he said, sighing. “It’s coming back, a little bit. I can… I can _move_ again. Wow. Oh wow… I’m… I’m _me.”_

And then Cassie was pushing me aside, and she was sinking to the floor, and she was wrapping him into a tight embrace. Jake looked bewildered and overwhelmed, and then his head curled into her shoulder, and he was pulling her tightly against him. They held each other tightly, neither making a sound.

I looked at the bird on the bed. Tobias was awake, but only just barely. His eyes were dull and confused below his tiny raptor oxygen mask. Would he ever remember me?

*

“He’s going to kill the Ellimist,” Jake said.

The words hung, almost suspended in the air. We were all frozen, staring at Jake, still leaning against Cassie, his eyes bright and alert.

“The Ellimist is a complex being, and one that doesn’t easily obey the laws of physics,” Erek said, slowly. “There is — very likely — no way to defeat him that our minds could conceive of.”

“There’s a way,” Jake said. “He found a way.” He pointed at me. “Using Rachel. I don’t know exactly, but —“

“Slow down, Big Jake,” Marco said. “Back this _up_ a hundred feet. Last time I saw you, aside from our starring roles in _Revenge of the Body Snatchers_ earlier, you were getting carted off to Crayak’s evil lair. You want to tell us what happened?”

“Yeah,” Jake said. “I don’t understand all of it. But I can try.

“We weren’t far from Crayak’s ship when we were taken — or Crayak’s ship wasn’t far from us, I don’t know. The Drode came to me — he had this thing he used, to talk to Crayak. Kind of this special crystal thing. I think — I think it was sort of like a hotline to him. He just touched it, and he said this word — _capsaicin_? Something like that. Like the pepper.”

“ _Capasin_?” I asked.

“That’s it,” Jake said. “How did you know?”

“They’re the ones who wiped out the Ketrans,” I said. Confusion spread across his face, so I added: “Keep going, I’ll fill you in later.”

“The Drode touches this thing, and then there’s Crayak right there, on sort of a hologram screen. And Crayak says: ‘ _BRING HIM TO ME… In the flesh…’_

“We’re inside of Crayak’s ship by this point, and we go up this sort of magnetic… elevator… thing. It’s hard to explain. And the Drode takes me inside this huge room with red curtains where there’s this glowing, purple mist. And from the center of it — I can _feel_ him…” Jake began to shake uncontrollably. Cassie forced him to sit down, and she wrapped him in her arms. “He was gloating. He asked if I remembered him, from the time I was infested _.”_ Cassie flinched at the word. “I… I don’t remember what I said. I’m surprised I remember anything.

“But he talked about you, Rachel. He said he was building you a body, and you would be joining us sooner, rather than later. He wanted to bring all of us together, _one last time_ , he kept saying. ‘ _The Animorphs and the Ellimist — all within my power.’_

“And he said he wanted to introduce me to his newest creation. And he pointed to the screen, and said, ‘ _Look at how the Kelbrids become one with me,_ ’ — and then he showed me this… this footage, I guess… of what he was doing to them…”

Jake shuddered. “It was horrible. And then out came Ax,” Jake looked at Ax, but he looked sick. “Do you remember that, Ax-man?”

<I… I remember… a nightmare…> Ax said uncertainly. 

Jake nodded. “You were there — but you had a mouth, that mouth with the red teeth. Crayak said, _‘First it will be you, and then the rest of your friends. And when Rachel wakes up, you’ll be there to guide her. She will be the Ellimist’s undoing. How foolish he was to go to her — he has given me the secret to his end!’_

“And then Crayak said: ` _Recant him — and let him wait for his brethren!’”_

_“_ That’s when it got you?” Marco said.

“Yes,” Jake whispered. “Ax, he — he touched my arm, and these _things_ came out of it. They crawled up my arms, down my throat — and then I was just… gone.”

“But you came back,” Marco said. “They brought you back to the ship. We saw you, you were catatonic, you — “ he stopped.

<Are you remembering a nightmare?> Ax asked.

“You infected us,” Marco said. “I couldn’t remember that part of it before. You showed up, and when we tried to help you, you — “

“I’m sorry,” Jake said, helplessly. “It forced me, I couldn’t stop it. Are you all out now? Are we free?”

“Not all of us,” Cassie said, and she gestured toward Tobias.

“Oh,” Jake said, and he looked at me. I couldn’t meet his eyes.

*

Cassie and Jake were hardly able to look at each other, and for a few seconds, we all stood together in a _really_ awkward silence. Marco was the one who finally said: “Well, seems like _you two_ have some catching up to do!” And then he took Ax and me by the arms as we walked out of the medical bay, calling out behind us, “Come along, Erek!” 

I heard Jake try to argue, but Cassie said, “Let me get you up to speed, okay?” And then they were talking, in low voices, and we were gone.

A few minutes later, the four of us were standing on the bridge.

“We still don’t know what Crayak found in my head,” I said.

“Let’s go back through it,” Marco said. “Crayak finds the Blade Ship. Crayak finds Stowaway Lady Chee. Lady Chee happens to have Phantom Rachel inside her head. Crayak figures out that Phantom Rachel chatted with his nemesis, the Ellimist, right before she — “ he made a slicing motion across his neck, and I winced. 

“Then Crayak doubles down, and manages to pull _something_ out of Phantom Rachel from Lady Chee. He gets this freaky-deaky memory of some extinct alien named Father who eats aliens. Do I have all this right so far?”

I nodded.

“So then — _what does Crayak do next?_ He works out a way to rebuild Father.”

“The facility on Ket,” Erek said, nodding. “That was where it created Rachel’s body, and the others.”

“Right — so Crayak builds his evil science lab. He makes Father out of scary space goop, and then rebrands it as _The One._ Why? Why call it something different?”

<Perhaps he wished its origins to be kept a secret,> Ax said.

“Maybe, but that matters,” Marco pointed at me. “Rachel is telling us that Father’s been a pea in gravity soup for millions of years — there’s no one _alive_ to keep it secret from. The _only_ people in the universe who know about Father are the Ellimist and our favorite warrior princess, here. Crayak didn’t want the Ellimist to know what he brought back — _why?_

_“_ And — “ Marco continued, without waiting for a response. “Let’s keep in mind what else he’s up to: simultaneously, he’s sending part of The One through the Blade Ship where it’s _definitely_ going to be spotted by the Andalite fleet, which is conveniently being led by…” he pointed to Ax.

<I wasn’t _leading_ the entire Andalite fleet, > Ax said, almost sounding amused. <Just one ship.>

“But Crayak knew — or he would have guessed — that you would be chasing for signs of the Blade Ship,” Marco said. “And did you find it?”

<Eventually, yes. But for years, there was nothing more than rumors. No sightings ever proved valid, not until —>

“Not until you stumbled _right_ on top of it,” Marco said.

<A trap,> Ax said, sounding almost amazed.

“Right,” Marco said. “Crayak had the Blade Ship — he knew it would draw you in. And —“ he breathed in wonderingly. “— Menderash escaped. _Crayak let him live, so he could draw_ us _back_.” Marco whistled through his teeth. “Ax, you were Crayak’s key to getting the rest of the Animorphs to him.”

<I was a fool,> Ax said, bitterly.

“So Crayak lures Ax, he tests out _The One_ , and oh boy, it’s ready to give _The Thing_ a run for its money. He leaves his Blade Ship hanging around, doing — uh —.”

“It was attacking the Kelbrids,” I said, remembering the reasons for Cassie and Erek’s journey. “It started going around and recanting the Kelbrids. Or killing them. Or both.”

“Yes,” Marco said. “But more importantly — meanwhile — me, and Ax and Jake are zipping out here — “

_< And me!>_ Jeanne said.

“And Jeanne,” I said.

“— and Jeanne, and Menderash, and Santorelli — Crayak is building _you_ a body, because he needs access to the full span of the Ellimist memories inside your head.

“And he’s doing all of this for a very simple reason,” Marco breathed. “He wants to kill the Ellimist. If he can torture and squash us on the way, and it all fits within the rules of their crazy games, we’re about to have a super villain devil monster running amok in the universe with nothing stopping him.

“The only part I don’t get,” Marco said. “Is how you and Cassie wound up here,” he pointed to Erek. “It feels too coincidental — the Kelbrids show up for a truce, and it just _has_ to be Cassie who comes out?”

Erek was shaking his head. “I’m an idiot,” he said, and I could hear the anger in his voice. “I’m so, so… stupid.”

“Fess up, Erek,” I said. “We need to move past this.”

So he told them about the Andalite intelligence, and the fixation they seemed to have with Cassie, and how he played right into Crayak’s trap of luring her to Ket. He even told them how the Andalites intended to use my comatose body as a propaganda piece.

“They were going to _Weekend at Bernies_ you?!” Marco shouted.

“That’s what I said!”

He shook his head. “That is _messed up,_ Erek. I thought you and the Chee were supposed to be good guys, at the end of the day.”

“I’m sorry,” Erek said. “I don’t know what else to say. I’m sorry.”

Marco rubbed his head with his thumb, and seemed to shake it off. “So Crayak’s got all of us here, under his thumb. And now he’s coming — but at this point, he doesn’t care about us. He thinks we’re either dead —“ He nodded toward Erek and me. “ —or molding away inside a tube. We aren’t on Crayak’s radar anymore, but he’s still coming here, and he’s bringing the whole kit and caboodle.”

<Kitten poodles?> Ax asked.

“It means the army! The calvary AND the cannons!” Marco nearly shouted. “Don’t you guys see it? You think it’s a coincidence we’re on Ket, which just _happens_ to be the home of our buddy the Ellimist? _This whole place is a trap —_ Crayak is trying to lure the Ellimist here, just like he lured us.”

“To kill him,” I said. “But that’s not possible. If Crayak could kill the Ellimist, he would have done it a million times over. They can’t destroy each other. That’s why they play their game.”

“There has to be something else,” Erek said. “He must have some advantage now, something he never had before. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be acting so aggressively. But _what?_ ”

*

_< Rachel?> _It was Jeanne.

_Yeah?_ I thought.

_< You know it’s you, right? You’re the advantage.>_

_Yeah_ , I said.

I took a deep breath.

“When the Ellimist — when he came to me — I think he _changed_ me,” I said. “Erek — you saw how the Ketran crystal lit up, when you and Cassie found me? — it responded to _me_. I think when the Ellimist spoke with me, just before I was killed, he shared something he didn’t mean to. Something that would be really bad for him, if Crayak found out. And Crayak realized what was in there, but he couldn’t get at it, because of the encryption. So he built me an entire body, and he manipulated all of you —“ I pointed at Marco. “ — to convince me to give something up willingly. And then he took it.”

“Took _what?”_ Marco said.

“I don’t know,” I said. “But I know how to find out.”

I turned to Erek.

“It’s time for Lourdes to go back into my mind.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again for following me along on this strange and weird Animorphs adventure, I am SO excited to share the next few chapters with you all! We're just about to kick off the final act of this story, and I am PUMPED to be writing it!
> 
> A lot of the next few chapters are scenes that have been cooking in my mind since the end of last summer, and I wasn't quite sure if I would ever reach them. So it's super cool to be approaching the climax of the story now, knowing that some wonderful people are reading it and leaving such wonderful feedback. I'll do my best to not let you down!
> 
> Next chapter to be released Wednesday, Dec. 12 at 9 p.m. ET.


	40. Marco

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rachel demands difficult truths from Marco.

**** We headed back to the medical bay, where the atmosphere was _incredibly_ uncomfortable. From outside the door, we heard Cassie talking very quickly, her words coming out in staccato bursts. Jake was sobbing quietly.

“Aren’t they _fun_?” Marco said, and opened the door.

Jake was sitting up in his bed, weeping quietly into his hands. Cassie looked up, but to my surprise, she looked neither upset nor angry — she looked radiant.

“Hi, Marco,” she said, smoothly. “Good timing. I _just_ finished telling Jake everything I needed to say to him.”

Jake wiped his eyes and blew his nose, loudly.

“How are you?” Cassie asked.

“I’m _swell_ ,” Marco said. “We’ve figured out most of Crayak’s evil plan. Rachel just needs Lourdes to muck around in her brain a little more, so we can figure out the last bit. Then we’re all probably going to die!”

“That sounds _terrible_! Anybody want an Andalite smoothie before the Super Howlers kill us? I’m _famished_.”

Erek stepped into the room, and the bright, fake smile vanished from her face.

“ _You,_ ” she said, pointing her finger. “You lied to me. You manipulated me. You spread _lies_ about me on the Internet. You’re the reason I’m here, and if I get killed, it’s on you. And if I do get killed, I hope you live, so that you live the rest of your long, long, _long_ life knowing that you are not — and have never been — _innocent_.”

Cassie took a deep breath. None of us made a sound. She lowered her hand.

“That’s it,” she said, sighing. “That’s all I have to say. Now what’s this about Lourdes and Rachel?”

*

“I can help you,” Lourdes whispered.

She could speak now, but her voice was almost inaudible, and choppy, like a record that had been scratched. “It won’t be like last time. Last time, they forced my hand. It was not… elegant.”

I snorted. “It was like a grizzly bear in an antique store,” I said. “I’m surprised you didn’t fry my brain.”

“The _ixcila_ technology, when used appropriately, is perfectly safe,” Erek said. “The One pushed Lourdes to use it crudely.”

“Because they were looking for something,” I said. I zeroed in on Lourdes. “Do you know what that was?”

Lourdes shook her head, slowly. “I only know that it was at the very end of your life.”

“The Ellimist,” I said. “He did more than just talk to me, didn’t he? He changed me somehow.”

Erek nodded, slowly. “Yes. I think he did.”

“So she goes back in, and we figure out what happened,” I said. “We go right to that moment when the Ellimist arrived — “

“No,” Erek said. “No — no, Rachel — you misunderstand. Our _ixcila_ is much more powerful than that. You’ll move through all the portions of your neural structure that remain unmapped. You’ll go through your life, and you can choose to embrace or reject what you find. You’ll be able to get your mind back, Rachel. All of it, if you want.”

*

I hadn’t expected this.

I guess I’d thought that Lourdes would dive in, quick and dirty, straight to the heart of the memories Crayak had been so desperate to access. She’d go in, grab the box, get out, and we’d have our answers.

But this wasn’t a mission. It was my life. And, like it or not, I didn’t have a choice in facing it. We _had_ to know what Crayak had found. I was going to have to face the person I had once been.

The Drode told me my true nature would emerge. He _sneered_ when he said it, and he meant it taunt me. But he was right. If I went into that bombed out fog of memories, I would have to face it.

And that scared me.

*

I stood there, thinking, one hand in my pocket, playing with the Minotaur’s severed claw.

“I’ll do it,” I said. “But I need to do something first.” 

I turned to Marco. “You, me, one-on-one, right now.”

His eyebrows raised in surprise. “Whoah-oh-oh, first I’m brought back to life, and now I get a hot date with Xena? I should buy a lotto ticket.”

_< He is so obnoxious,> _Jeanne said.

_Yeah, he is_ , I said to her. _But right now, I need to talk with a jerk._

*

“I need you to tell me about the end of the war,” I said. We were in the galley. I jumped right to the point, and he didn’t look surprised.

“Why me?” He asked.

“You won’t lie about it. You won’t sugarcoat it. You won’t talk around it, like Cassie does. And Jake — Jake can’t do it. I don’t trust Erek. Ax is an alien from a different culture. He’s got different standards of what’s acceptable.” I stared at Marco levelly. “I need a perspective from a _human_ who was there, who saw me how I was, at the end of it. I need to be ready to face her.”

Marco leaned back. “You really want to know? You want to go there?”

“I don’t have a choice,” I said. “I don’t want to get lost again, Marco.”

He lifted his hands and dragged them down across his face, sighing.

“By the end of the war, you were… borderline psychotic.”

He gritted his teeth, like he was expecting me to react. But I just stared at him.

“You were willing to do whatever it took,” Marco said. “But after a while, it was too extreme. You weren’t bad at strategy in the beginning — you and I were on the same page, mostly. Whenever we’d take a vote, it would be Cassie on one side and Jake, Tobias and Ax in the middle. But you and me — we were always together. Even if we argued about it. And that was kind of cool.

“But after a while, it wasn’t cool. I started to wonder: _Am I wrong, because Rachel thinks it’s right?_ After a while, you weren’t killing the Yeerks to save the human race — you were killing them because you _liked_ doing it.

“A lot came up in the debrief — that’s when we got together, right after the war, to get our stories straight before going to the press. There was some stuff we didn’t want people to know, like the Chee. That’s when Ax told us that your own mother described you as a monster and a blood-thirsty freak — he actually thought that was a _compliment_. That made Tobias angrier than I’ve ever seen him — he made Ax _swear_ to never repeat it.”

“Cassie said — she said that I wanted to save Tom,” I blurted out.

“You did…” Marco said, rubbing his chin. “…sort of. That was Cassie’s interpretation. The glass half full.”

“I… didn’t?” I was stunned.

“You threatened Tom’s Yeerk with Kandrona starvation in front of him,” Marco said. “My impression was that you were trying to intimidate him. I don’t… I don’t think you cared whether or not Tom lived or died.”

“Oh,” I said.

I was only realizing just now how much I had pinned on what Cassie had said. I’d been holding out some hope that, deep down, there was something inside me that the war hadn’t annihilated completely. But Marco was telling me that wasn’t likely. He was telling me there was nothing left.

*

_< I’m not human anymore_.>

_Neither am I_.

*

“Tell me about David.”

Marco looked like I’d punched him.

“Not something you talked about on Leno?” I asked.

He shook his head very slowly.

“The Drode used him against me,” I said. “For some reason, those memories were locked down tighter than almost anything else. When he brought up David, it almost killed me — I mean, it _really_ almost killed me. So who was he? What did we do to him?”

“Don’t make me do this, Rachel — “

“You have to do this!” I shouted. “You’ve had however many years to deal with what happened, but in a few minutes, I’m going to have to relive it.”

“David was… he was just a kid, like us,” Marco sighed. “The older I get, the more that bothers me. We made a hard choice, but we were all just kids, and we didn’t see any other way.”

Marco didn’t mince words. He told me David found the morphing cube, how a mission went wrong, and why we made David into an Animorph. David betrayed us, tried to kill us, and left us without a choice.

“You know, it wasn’t even your idea,” Marco said. “It was Cassie’s. That really shocked me… she used his own human nature against him.”

“But I’m the one that stopped him,” I said.

Marco told me what we did.

*

_I was drawing lines in the sand with a jagged piece of rebar. Ax was next to me in his human morph. His arms dangled as he watched me trace lines, cross them, draw them again, pointless patterns that represented nothing. We did not speak._

*

“And we never saw him again?” I asked Marco. “After we dropped him on rat island?”

“Far as I know, he never left,” Marco said. “I looked up the lifespan of a rat once. There’s no way he’s alive anymore. I try — I really try not think about it.” His whole body shuddered involuntarily. “No one wants to hear about that part of the war.”

There was more to that memory, I was sure of it… but it was clear that Marco had told me as much as he knew.

I sat down next to him.

“I stayed there, with him, until the end. Me and Ax,” I said. “I volunteered for it… so the rest of you didn’t have to.”

“I’m sorry,” Marco said. “We shouldn’t have let you do that. It was wrong of us. It was weak of us to make you face that alone.”

“I wasn’t the same after that, was I?” I asked. “That’s when I should have backed out. But I dug in.”

“You were a psychopathic monster,” Marco said.

“You don’t have to rub it in —“

“— who I would have _died_ for,” Marco interrupted. “Who any of us would have died for. You scared the hell out of us, but when you died, it was like a piece of us was missing. You were stronger than all of us, Rachel. And here you are. Back from the dead. And you fought off Crayak’s monsters and you rescued _us_ , and you couldn’t even turn into an elephant. If you can face all that, you can face your crazy psycho self.”

He broke off, suddenly out of breath.

“When did _you_ get so touchy-feely?” I asked. I could feel tears at the edges of my eyes, and I didn’t care if he could see them.

He smiled, and then he hugged me.

*

“There’s one more thing, Marco.”

“Yeah?”

“The One — you were controlled by it. You had it inside your body, when it wasn’t in your head. Like Tobias does now. But you’re clear, and he’s not. Do you think he has a chance? Everyone else keeps telling me it’s going to be okay, but I gotta know if you _really_ think he’s going to suddenly start thought-speaking again.”

“…No. I’m sorry, Rachel. It was hard enough thinking straight coming out of that tube as human. His mind is still buried under the hawk and whatever residual stuff The One leaves behind. We don’t have any way to trigger his morphing. Without that… he might as well be a _nothlit_ again.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter to be released Friday, Dec. 14, 9 p.m. ET.


	41. Rachel, deconstructed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rachel confronts what the war did to her, as Lourdes guides her through her shattered memories.

**** When Marco and I went back to the medical area, we found just Cassie, Tobias, and Lourdes.

“Where’s everyone else?” I asked.

“Up at the bridge,” Cassie replied. She was trying to get an alert Tobias to eat some Andalite cube that looked totally unlike anything I’ve ever seen in the normal diet of a red-tailed hawk. “They’re strategizing. Or something.”

“I’ll join them!” Marco piped up, vanishing into the hallway.

“Jake and Erek… are _talking_?” I asked.

She nodded. “It’s awkward. They are both very obviously avoiding talking about the end of the war, but… yeah. It’s a start, I guess.”

“I guess it is,” I said. “How’s Tobias?”

“Near as I can tell, he’s fine,” Cassie said, sighing. “ — For a red-tailed hawk, at least. No thought-speak. Nothing un-hawklike, except for the lack of coordination.”

“At least he’s not hurt,” I said.

A crazy idea suddenly ran through my head: what if I opened the box, leaned over, and kissed Tobias? That worked in the Disney movies, didn’t it? _True love’s first kiss._

Except this wasn’t a Disney movie, and if I tried to plant a big fat wet one, the hawk-mind was liable to freak out and tear a lip off my face.

The thought was somehow uproariously hilarious and crushingly depressing at the same time, and it left me feeling drained and exhausted. What was it Erek had said about waves? _Destructive interference_. One side cancels out the other.

“He’s still in there, Rachel,” Cassie said.

“Don’t — “

“He _is_ ,” Cassie said, sounding determined. “I was in Jake’s head, remember? He was in there too. He was just buried. He was way down deep. Tobias is in there too, deep down, below the hawk.”

I smiled, and nodded, but inside, I thought, _If we can’t reach him… does it matter?_

*

“I’m kind of glad the others aren’t here.” I looked down at Lourdes, whose hologram flickered again to that blonde bombshell actress, looking up at me with a wry smile. “Lourdes and I need to have some girl-time.”

She reached out.

“That’s it, huh? We just touch?”

Lourdes nodded.

“Okay,” I said, and then I shook her hand.

*

I was expecting _2001: A Space Odyssey_. I was expecting colors to mesh and wash over me fast and without stopping. But that’s not what happened — instead, almost immediately, I retreated into an empty whiteness. The only thing comparable was traveling through the marshmallowy white foam of Z-space, on all sides, floating.

Unexpectedly, my mother walked out of the foam.

My heart leaped into my chest when I saw her. I wanted to say her name, but I was speechless. She was younger than I remembered her, and — what was going on with her hair? It was _curly_ — did she have a perm?!

“Rachel,” she said. “Rachel!”

“Mom…” I murmured, opening my arms. _I missed her._

But she walked past me, and I realized that she wasn’t talking to me, not exactly.

“Rachel, don’t you dare,” she said, looking up. I followed her gaze, and watched as something else emerged from the foam — a spiral wooden staircase, ornate with decoration and moldings, curling up, coming into focus —

At the top: a little girl, maybe six years old, with wispy blonde hair.

I swear, at that moment, I heard a _thunk_ inside my own head. _That little girl was me_. I must be four — maybe only three — years old. And that staircase — this had been at my grandfather’s house!

“ _Rachel_ ,” my mother was seething. “Don’t you —“

I was remembering now! The little girl was full of fire — she was mad at her mother for forgetting Bobo Bear, my favorite stuffed animal. Little Rachel was fascinated by the stairs — I remembered that too! — but her parents and her grandparents always told her to stay away from them. But now she had made it to the top, and she was going to see how quickly she could make it down to the bottom the best way she could.

Cackling, the little girl vaulted herself forward, somersaulting dramatically down the staircase.

_I remembered this._ I’d scraped up my knee and scared the _hell_ out of my mom — but I hadn’t gotten myself hurt. For years after, my grandfather talked about how my mom couldn’t decide after if she was more mad at me or more relieved that I was okay. It was almost a running joke.

_Was this my first memory?_ I wondered, watching that little girl come to a shrieking, sprawled out fine even as the staircase and my mom disappeared into the foam again.

_Yes…_ I thought. _This is where it begins…_

*

More memories, faster now. My childhood rushed by — a childhood where I leaped from every swing and socked any boy that teased me. I actually got suspended in third grade for giving the class bully a black eye.

I seemed to get worse the more my parents fought with each other, I noticed. In hindsight, there was nothing surprising about this. They would yell at in the kitchen. I had a system for it: I would close the kitchen door, and then open the porch door, _to let the sound out_ , I always thought. Then I would go upstairs and bring Jordan and Sara into my room, at the end of the hall, as far away from the kitchen as I could. I would close the door and put on the soundtrack from _Beauty and the Beast_ , as loud as I could. They loved that movie, and the three of us would have a sing-along. We couldn’t hear the fight when we were singing. I could hear us singing, in the foam.

_Snap. Thunk. Plunk._ I could _feel_ the pieces coming together in my mind, and I swear, I could have cried from relief. I hadn’t realized how much I’d been missing. I’d had a past without being aware of the specifics — but now I could feel my foundation locking into place. The disjointed and scattered _ixcila_ was knitting back together!

My parents divorced, and now I was prowling the mall for sales, flush with cash from a guilty father and possessed by a newly emergent eye for fashion. There was gymnastics, too, mostly because my mom wanted me to take up a sport, and I’d always been good at tumbling and jumping (as evidenced on my grandfather’s staircase).

I marched through my relatively normal life without incident, until, of course, the construction site.

*

That part happened as I expected — except for when Visser Three stood above Elfangor, holding his flailing body in the air. When that happened, time stopped.

“What’s going on?” I said. My system was flooded with terror, the same panic I had experienced during that horrible night. “Why did it stop?”

Lourdes appeared before me, questioningly. She was transparent, in the guise of her movie-actress persona. < _Is this something you want to remember? > _She asked me, although not audibly. _< You can forget it, if you’d like. Any traumatic memory can be erased.>_

I grappled with this. To forget Elfangor’s murder… he had given us the power to morph. He had changed our lives, and given us a chance to save the world.

He had also doomed me to die.

“I…” I said. If I chose to forget it, I could be once step closer to the girl who walked before.

But if I did — what about what came next? My life as an Animorph was all based on this moment. What if the psychopath I became was rooted here too? Losing it might also prevent me from having the chance to understand what I had become.

“Keep it,” I whispered, and then I watched him die.

*

A day later, I was lying in the sun near Cassie’s barn. Tobias was watching me.

I _knew_ he was watching me. He and I had arrived together, by accident. My mom had given me a ride to Cassie’s, and halfway there, I had looked out the window and seen Tobias walking along the side of the road. We were still miles from Cassie’s, and he looked bored and lost, wandering just off the shoulder.

Somehow I convinced my mom to pick him up. “He’s in our group project,” I said, the first version of an oft-repeated lie.

Tobias looked so confused when I opened the door, so I smiled and waved at him. He looked totally dumbfounded — it was really, really sweet. He slid into the seat next to me, stumbling over thanking my mom.

“So _Tobias_ ,” my mom said. “You’re going to pull your weight in this assignment, aren’t you? Rachel says you’ve gotta write a whole report on World War I.”

In the early days, I always had us studying American conflict. It seemed like less of a lie that way (although I almost screwed it up when I was _actually_ assigned a Vietnam diorama a week after I’d done “an exhaustive deep dive into the Tet Offensive” which was really a cover to deep dive as a squid to save the Pemalite Ship.

“Nothing worse than someone who doesn’t do the job,” my mother said.

Tobias’s eyes fell, and something inside him drew me toward it. Through the years and hindsight, I could see it now clearly. Tobias never had a mom or a dad, not really, and he was shy, _so shy_. My mom only meant to tease, but to him, any negative attention from a parental figure cut deep.

“Leave him alone, _mom —_ Tobias is _awesome_ ,” I said, putting as much sarcasm in my voice as I could. “He, like, already did research at the library when I was at gymnastics. Right?”

“Yup,” Tobias said. For a second, just a second, our eyes met.

I didn’t know it then, but it was so obvious now: that was the minute I fell in love with him.

*

And then on the farm, him and me, waiting for Jake and the others, while Cassie ran around as a horse. While I lay in the sun, I felt his eyes on me.

It wasn’t lewd or anything. I was fully clothed, and he was leaning on a fence, occasionally looking up at the sky, and then looking back to me. Back and forth, back and forth.

“I turned into my cat,” he blurted out.

“Huh?”

“It works. The morphing. You acquire them first, and then you have to think hard about it. Then you turn into them.”

“How do you acquire them?” I said.

His face brightened. “I’ll show you.”

*

Inside the barn, at the end of a row of cooing, hooting and grumbling animals in cages, I saw a red-tailed hawk. It was injured and annoyed as we approached it. Tobias reached out, and it turned and made a warning hiss at him.

“Maybe you shouldn’t,” I said, eyeing the talons and the beak.

“It’s okay,” Tobias said as he slipped a finger onto the birds plumage. “They relax when it happens.”

The hawk slowed, then quieted. Tobias withdrew his hand.

“It’s done,” he said, a huge grin on his face. “I can become a hawk now! Isn’t that _awesome?_ ”

*

Little by little, I saw myself begin to change.

We ascended, panicked, from the Yeerk pool. In the frenzy, and with the wisdom of what was to come next, I saw the seeds of my bloodlust sowed. I was the elephant, rampaging through Taxxons. I _liked_ the way they ran from. I _loved_ knowing they were afraid of me.

And then the next day, my adrenaline still high, frightened on some level, but also _eager_ to see what would come next — I found out Tobias had been trapped.

I had been confused, and then I had been angry. _And there was nothing I could do_. Why did I feel this way? I had only known Tobias a few days, but my sorrow felt boundless, and I couldn’t shake it, so I buried it deeply, as far down as I could

Deep inside me, something red began to pulse. If the battle had sowed seeds of what I was to become, my anger at Tobias’s fate was like Miracle Gro.

*

_Keep it. Keep it. Keep it_.

The battles were becoming bloodier. _How had we ever managed to stay alive?_ They were all the same.

Jake: “We’ve got a mission.” 

Marco: “Let’s think about it.” 

Me: “Let’s do it.” 

And on, and on, and on.

Every day I was becoming number to who I was, and more attuned to myself as a warrior. I was learning on the fly how to fight, and I was discovering that I was good at it. 

The person I used to be fell away. Gymnastics went first, and then my friendships: I had cared so much about Melissa Chapman in the beginning, but a year later, I never thought of her at all.

I relived the battle at Matcom, that weird science lab where the Yeerks had been trying to hack the Pemalite crystal. Part of me shuddered when I saw how Erek tore through the Hork-Bajir and Human Controllers like he was shredding tissue paper. I had forgotten how brutal and quick it was — most of the others didn’t see it, but I’d caught the entire ten seconds. Part of me cringed  —  but another part leaned in to _admire_ the carnage. 

I was changing all right — every minute of every day was bending me toward a higher, crueler purpose.

But I wouldn’t let Lourdes erase any memories, even as they became increasingly violent. Every one of them was a tiny brick in the structure of what would become monster Rachel, and if I was going to see myself at the end of the war, I needed to understand how I got there.

And then came David.

*

“Keep it.”

She hesitated, giving me a chance to change my mind. I was a rat inside a pipe headed for the light. They would slam down the trap as soon as I left it. I knew what was about to happen, but Lourdes gave me a chance to skip past it. To move on with my life as though it never happened.

But I knew I couldn’t do that, because I knew that this was the point when everything changed. This was when the girl on the beam lost her balance.

I had been bending that way, it was obvious. But there had been a time, after the Ellimist, when a bird would fly into my room and turn into a boy and crawl into my bed. When that happened, the war felt like it was happening to someone else. Tobias was the only thing that made the fight go away, even for a little bit. That’s what made him so special.

What we did to David changed things. Sure, he deserved it. Even seeing it all played back again, I couldn’t see another way out of our predicament. We tricked him, and we trapped him.

But hindsight did grant me some uncomfortable wisdom: in the flashes of David’s maniacal calculation, I saw something else: a dark mirror, with flashes of myself reflected. We told ourselves we were better than David, and that justified what we did to him. But David never made it to the end of the war, and I had a terrible feeling, even though I hadn’t seen all of it yet, that I had much more blood on my hands than he did when we stole his humanity.

Like I said, he deserved it.

And maybe we deserved what we got, too.

*

He was screaming now in thought-speak, while me and Ax sat next to each other drawing lines in the sand. Neither of us said a word, but when the clock neared the two hour mark, he reached out and grabbed my hand.

I felt a flash of anger — he was supposed to be the brave soldier, trained to fight, why did I have to be the one keeping it together?

But then I squeezed his hand back, and I closed my eyes. A little egg timer went off, _ding, ding, ding._ I looked at Ax, who nodded. David didn’t realize it for a few minutes yet. He was still begging.

If the war had ended before that day, I think I might’ve had a chance. I think the cancer of rage that grew inside me might have stopped right then. But once we were past David, there was no stopping it.

It was so clear now, what had happened to me. I hadn’t been angry — I had been scared. I’d been scared out of my mind, all the time. And some people might dissolve under that kind of pressure, but not me.

When I was afraid of something, I became _scarier._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really love this chapter. Thanks for sticking with me -- hopefully the pace hasn't slowed down too much. I promise we're headed somewhere, and when the story picks up, it's going to explode. All these pieces are critical to what is coming, and I think Rachel shines in the softer moments as brightly as in the action-packed ones.
> 
> Next chapter to be released Sunday, Dec. 16 at 9 p.m. ET.


	42. Rachel, constructed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rachel reaches the end of her life, and discovers why Lourdes gave her a second.

**** Faster, now. I was at the bottom of the sea! I was traveling through time! I was tearing and smashing through Yeerk forces.

I was becoming a monster.

Through the blood and the battles and the fog of war, one thing was becoming increasingly clear — I was disengaging from those around me. I treated them coldly. The playful banter of the early days between Marco and I dropped away. My sisters and I never spoke, and even Jake began to treat me less like a relative and more like an asset.

As stark as that line was, so was another: the hawk in the sky kept me connected to Earth. I didn’t care if the rest of the world fell down around me as long as Tobias was there with me.

We came to that night, the one I had remembered in the forest on Ket. And, God, I cried again, this time not because I was afraid of being lost in the woods, but because I could see how much pain I was in.

_< I’m not human anymore,>_ Tobias whispered, and I watched the light drain out of my eyes.

_“Neither am I,”_ she said, and then I couldn’t stand it.

“Stop,” I said. “Wait. I need a minute.”

I blinked, and I was back in the medical bay, with tears streaming down my face. I looked around, and I saw that Cassie had left.

“I’m sorry,” I said to Lourdes, choking on an angry sob. “This is too much.”

_< You’re doing great, Rachel,> _Jeanne said. _< Your neural pathways are stabilizing — can you feel it? They’re faster.>_

_Yeah_ , I said. _But it hurts._

_< Sometimes the only path forward is through the fire,> _Jeanne said. _< I am here, if you need me.>_

I turned away from Lourdes and looked at Tobias, the bird-boy who had saved me, over and over and over. He looked more alert now, calm, if a bit disgruntled. At least he had tried to stop walking — every attempt resulted in a drunken-looking stumble.

Had we even spoken after that last night? I doubted it — that had been the night after the Hork-Bajir were driven out of their valley. We were about to be thrown into the endgame. What if I’d never said goodbye? What if —

_No_ , I decided. _He’s right there. He’s still Tobias. He’s still there, under the hawk mind. If I have something to say, I can say it._

“I love you,” I said. “I’ve loved you since you climbed in my mom’s car the day after Elfangor died. You were the only thing that kept me going, most of the time. Especially after… after David.

“I wish I’d known you before all this. I wish we could’ve been girlfriend and boyfriend, for real. I wish we could’ve gone to prom together.”

I had to say it, I couldn’t stop now. “It killed me when you decided to stay a hawk. I couldn’t understand it. I still don’t. But — it made you happy. And I hope it makes you happy now.If a part of you ever comes back, and I’m not alive to tell you this — I hope you remember how much you meant to me.”

Then all my words were spoken, while the hawk watched silently. After a moment, he began to prune a feather.

*

I reached out my hand, and Lourdes took it. I was ready now. It was time to see what I had become.

But the first thing I saw upon re-entry — _Crayak’s glowing eye!_

And I was a rat — and David was there, also a rat, squeaking furiously.

My heart began to pound — I didn’t remember this!

“I can free you,” Crayak said. His strange body pulsed and shrank in front of me, muscled limbs below a glowing eye. “But first, you must free yourself from yourself.”

The memories that followed didn’t make much sense — even now, I couldn’t tell how much of it was real. It had been some Crayak plot, partly to torture me, and partly to see if they could convince me to sacrifice Jake.

But after Crayak and the Drode vanished, leaving me to my waning days as an Animorph, there was a still a white rat standing in front of me, peering into my eyes.

<I won’t go back,> David said. <I’d rather die than go back to that island. You’ll have to kill me.>

“I won’t do that,” I said.

<Kill me Rachel!> He was begging me. <If there’s any humanity left in you at all.>

“I don’t know what to do,” I whispered.

*

Lourdes paused the memory, appearing in front of David’s small face. She looked at me questioningly.

I was shaking so bad that I could hardly speak. I knew it was me, standing there, weeping, paralyzed by indecision, but I couldn’t recognize myself. There was nothing left of Rachel at this point. That girl was now tumbling endlessly down the stairs, farther and father. From this moment on, she could not come back. 

I knew now how I had gotten to this moment, and I knew what came next. There was no lesson to be learned from it.

“Not that,” I said. “I don’t want — don’t let me remember that.”

She nodded, wordlessly, and David disappeared from my vision, and my memory of his fate vanished forever.

*

Things happened even faster — I watched the tension rise as we discovered the Yeerks knew we were human. I re-lived the day we evacuated our parents, laughing when my mother attacked my grizzly bear self with a spice rack. I felt Jake’s pain as his parents were taken and used in a trap against him one we almost didn’t escape.

In those last weeks, we prevented World War III and kicked off open confrontation between Yeerk and human forces. We blew up the Yeerk Pool, and then the whole weight of the conflict exploded on the ground, while the Andalites waited in the atmosphere for enough Yeerks to amass so they could kill all of them, regardless of the human cost. I heard Jake order me to die, and then I followed those orders, alighting on Tom in secret, making my own path to the Blade Ship.

I knew what happened next. I’d seen it in Lourdes’s playbacks. But seeing it now, with the full weight of my entire life behind me — it was as if every second was layered with emotion. I knew I was going to my death, and on some level, I was _eager_ for it.

I looked up into the eyes of a polar bear, who killed me with a single blow.

And then the Ellimist.

“Who are you?” I demanded. “Who are you to play games with us? You appear, you disappear, you use us. Who are you? What are you?”

He reached out to me, but when I took his hand, I never felt a grip. I was drawn away with him — through him — back to his earliest memories of Ket. I was flying through the sky with him; I was watching him play his games.

The Equatorial High Crystal fell from the sky. I became a refugee with the Ellimist and the last of his tribe. When they left, I felt Toomin’s gaze shift away from Ket, in a pointed move that I realized now was deliberate and forceful. He had no interest in revisiting, or even dwelling on, the ruins of his former home. He had spent all the years since purposefully ignoring it.

_They shouldn’t have left so fast,_ I thought, remembering the sculpture from inside the ruins of the Crystal. _Some of the Ketrans were still alive_.

We searched the galaxy, until that fateful day when they arrived at Father’s moon and were trapped beneath the surface. I looked down and saw myself filled with his tendrils, wrapped around my thoughts, toying with me in game after game, until I figured out how to play.

The memories were shockingly detailed; it no longer surprised me that Crayak managed to create The One from fragments of them. What was Father, anyway? Just a sea sponge that was really good at being a predator. Crayak probably made him like I would make tomato soup.

Eventually, I watched the Ellimist kill Father by hurtling him into the gravity well of a planet, and move from it, filled with bitterness and the ghosts of his dead companions.

*

I saw the Ellimist’s initial encounter with Crayak, and I watched the two of them spread prosperity and violence across the universe. But in all of it, I saw nothing distinctive or obvious, nothing that could give Crayak an advantage in the present day. I kept all the memories, but I almost didn’t; nothing seemed remotely useful.

I could sense that I was nearing the end. I studied them desperately as they waged their war, as the Ellimist slowly began to win it; there _had_ to be something here, something of cosmic importance, some secret so volatile that it had convinced Crayak to bring me back from the dead.

The Ellimist chased him into Zero Space, emerged, fought, dove back in. They went farther and farther into space, and despite all of it, the Ellimist was still winning. Until —

— Toomin emerged from Zero Space, within the event horizon of a black hole.

I felt myself pulled with him, I felt his panic of certain death. Crayak had laid a trap that rendered his vast mind and body useless. A portion of him — the oldest parts, the last of his Ketran body — was swallowed into it, and I — I went with him.

Inside — time out of mind! We were turned inside out, we could see the very _threads_ of space-time! We were everywhere and nowhere at once. The forces of the black hole tore apart the Ellimist — and then, in some cosmic insanity — they _reassembled him as something else._ Something capable of freezing time, of appearing across vast distances in the blink of an eye, of transporting five kids, an Andalite and a robot to the planet of the Iskoort.

I saw a strand of space time appear in front of me. It looked like one of those string lights at movie theaters, the ones woven along the edge of the seats, pointing to an exit. I reached out and touched it, and I felt it’s power. I pushed it, and _it moved._

Something lurched and jolted in me — this was just a memory, wasn’t it? But it was so, _so_ real. I sensed that if I tore this strand, it could leave a trail of devastation across the universe.

_We were outside of time_. And what if — what if being outside of time made this memory more than a memory? What if I had actual _power_ here?

I searched around me, for some kind of advantage. Was there a string I could pluck and remove Crayak from existence?

But — I didn’t know what was what. If I tore threads, I could unleash terror. I could destroy everyone I knew and loved. I could create timelines and destroy them.

I couldn’t risk it.

So I stood still, and I watched as the Ellimist changed. He had drawn me so deeply into this memory, unknowingly unlocking the door to another realm. This place had _changed_ him — it had made him into a god. And by bringing me into it, _he had changed me too!_

But not in the same way, I quickly realized. I was not a god. I couldn’t snap my fingers and carry myself and the Animorphs back to Earth. I couldn’t freeze time, and I couldn’t save us.

_Think Rachel_ , I thought. _It wasn’t the black hole that changed me — it was the Ellimist._ I had been connected to him when he brought me here, a dying girl piggy-backed to his trippy experience. He couldn’t have known that it would affect me — he had never shown anyone this moment, the most intimate of his memories. If he had known, why would it have mattered? I was dead, anyway.

_What had the black hole done to me?_ I held my hands in front of my face — they glowed blue and broke apart, then shimmered with a yellow hue and reassembled. I sensed something different — a _thrum_ inside myself with regular intervals — like a heartbeat.

_Have you ever been near a black hole?_ Erek had asked.

Yes, but I didn’t know it. The Ellimist had brought me into one, and unknowingly it had given me this second heartbeat, which I knew now was part of him as well.

A _crucial_ part of him, I realized. He had survived when he should not have. This second heartbeat — this strange energy from the black hole — it had transformed him into a god. It hadn’t had the same effect on me — why would it? I was only experiencing it secondhand. But it _did_ have power, so much that it had imprinted on me and been captured by the _ixcila_. It was so potent that it was still radiating from my cells.

The memory faded. I was again on the floor of the Blade Ship. I was again dying, these last seconds slowed down by an incredible amount. And I wanted to know something.

“Answer this, Ellimist: Did I… did I made a difference? My life, and… my death… was I worth it? Did my life really matter?”

“Yes,” he said.

_Liar_ , I thought, because I knew what would happen after the war.

But I forgave him. Not even the Ellimist could see the future, not really.

“You were brave. You were strong. You were good. You mattered.”

“Yeah. Okay then. Okay, then.”

I wondered if —

*

I was back in the _Rachel_. I was alive, and I was all caught up, and the last of my memories, my personality, had all plunked into place. I couldn’t stop shaking.

Lourdes was still holding my hand, and I felt her squeeze it, gently.

“Lourdes,” I whispered. “There’s something I’ve been wondering. Why — why did you use the _ixcila_ on me? I was a murderer — I _liked_ to kill. I wasn’t innocent. I didn’t deserve it.”

She smiled, and then I saw the air shimmer around us. Suddenly, we were in my mother’s car, Jordan and Sara in the back seat.

Jordan and Sara were playing with dolls, and my mom was driving agitatedly, with grizzly bear me squashed into the front seat. With a jolt, I realized that this had been from the day we evacuated our parents — I recognized my mother’s outfit from the earlier memory. Lourdes had been there, in the back of the car, with my sisters. Her role was to ensure, via hologram, that no one saw us when we escaped.

My mother and I were arguing in the front seat and paying no attention to Jordan and Sara, who looked totally unconcerned with the sudden disruption to their lives.

And then suddenly, Sara looked directly at Lourdes.

“Rachel’s gonna be safe, right? You’ll keep her safe?”

“Of course I will,” Lourdes replied. She sounded surprised.

“Good,” Sara said. “Because we love her a lot.”

*

The air shimmered, and I was back in the medical bay.

“I made a promise,” Lourdes said, and she smiled through those blonde bombshell eyes, full of glittering tears.

I was partly laughing, partly crying at the simplicity of her motivation. The more I became myself, the more I wondered why Lourdes saved me. But she never intended to. She had gone to save Tom, which I thwarted when I ripped his snake body apart in front of her. But she knew that I was loved, and that I mattered to someone. And that made me worth the _ixcila_.

I had been saved by my sister’s love.

*

When my surging emotions calmed, I stepped away from Lourdes, smiled, and thanked her for her help. Then I left the medical bay and headed for the bridge. 

I wanted to take another look at that little yellow line.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had a lot of ground to cover in this chapter, but I think I tackled everything I wanted to.
> 
> Some may displeased that I didn't dig deeply into the ending of book 48, so let me say this: 
> 
> KA made many decisions that baffled me about that series, but leaving David's fate ambiguous, in my opinion, was a stroke of genius. For years, I wondered if Rachel chose to save or destroy him, and to think deeply about the consequences of that action. It isn't always a good idea to keep an audience guessing, but almost twenty years later, I still think about it from time to time, and I find it exceptional that such a piece of work still resonates (especially because most of book 48, I'm sorry to say, is not so great).
> 
> My choice to retain the ambiguity is a nod to that incredible (and painful) scene, and a way (hopefully) for me to illustrate how Rachel is confronting and changing the person she once was.
> 
> We are two-thirds of the way through this story now. I haven't finished the whole thing, but I don't expect it to go past sixty chapters. I'm not as far ahead as I'd like (these longer chapters really slow me down!) but so far, releasing every two days is still doable.
> 
> Next chapter coming out Tuesday, Dec. 18, at 9 p.m. ET.


	43. Destructive Interference

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crayak's true motivations become clear.

**** “The line represents geon activity,” Erek said, tracing the waves of it with his finger. “It only appears in you after the _ixcila_ bonded. As I said before, it is only associated with the gravitational fields associated with black holes — and that’s even a _gross_ over simplification of what it is.”

“Geon…” Jake said, lifting his head up. “The One was looking for those.”

All of us were at the bridge, tucked into whatever seats we could find. I had relayed my observations from the Ellimist memories, and we were trying to piece Crayak’s evil plan together.

“I didn’t know what it was,” Jake said. “The One had me relate all kinds of statistics and measurements from the dashboard… but it _definitely_ had a reading for geons, I remember reporting that we could detect it, so it must have been of interest to Crayak.”

“What exactly is a _geon_?” Marco asked.

“A geon is a gravitational wave held together in a confined region by the gravitational attraction of its own field energy,” Erek said. “The name is a contraction of _gravitational electromagnetic entity_.”

“Uh, we aren’t P.H.d’s, Erek —“

“This is a complicated mathematical concept!” Erek said, sounding annoyed. “I can't just distill it down to a soundbite!”

“Whatever it is,” Cassie said, raising her arms. “It’s directly from the Ellimist, and Crayak was after it.” She pointed at the line. “The Ellimist has that too, correct?”

“Yeah,” I said, nodding. “He _definitely_ has it. He went into the black hole, got turned inside out, and then _whammo_. Geon city.”

“Quantum entanglement,” Marco said suddenly. “That’s how it got into Rachel, when the Ellimist showed it to her.”

We all stared at him.

“What?” He said, looking annoyed. “My dad was a physicist, I know _some_ things. When the Ellimist took you to that Spooky-Space-Time-Void-Land, you got tangled up in it, same as he did. And no matter how far away you are from it, you’re still affected by it. You’re _connected_ to it.”

“But how does Crayak _use_ that against the Ellimist?” Jake mused. “He builds Rachel’s body, sticks the _ixcila_ in there and manages to _finally_ extract this line — how is that helpful?”

I closed my eyes, thinking. This line _meant_ something. It wasn’t exactly right to say it was the source of the Ellimist’s powers, but it _was_ intrinsically connected to them. Toomin’s trip through the black hole had left him radiating these wave-like patterns, and because I was exposed to them, so was I.

But that meant…

“Erek,” I said. “What was that you said to me earlier? The thing where you have a wave that’s the same as the other wave, but opposite.”

“Destructive interference?”

“Yes, that — what do you have to know about the wave to do that?”

“You have to know the exact, precise frequency and amplitude,” Erek said slowly. “It must be exactly correct — there is no room for error.”

“And what would happen if — if Crayak got the frequency from me?” I said. “And he used it to produce an opposing wave?”

“In theory… he could neutralize its effects.”

“Does that mean the Ellimist would lose his powers?” Cassie asked.

“If the geon energy was so connected… yes. Yes, that is possible.”

“Would that kill him?”

“No,” Erek said. “It would weaken him — I can’t say exactly to what extent, because there are too many unknown variables, and we are far, _far_ into quantum theory at this point — but I don’t believe the destructive interference would kill him.”

“It might make him a regular guy, though,” Marco said. “And then they could kill him.”

“Yes!” I said. “It all makes sense now!”

“No, it doesn’t,” Cassie said. “If Crayak was going to kill the Ellimist, how come he’s got a whole warehouse filled with creepy alien bodies rigged up to the ceiling? Why go to the trouble of creating The One at all? He didn’t need it to build your body, Rachel — and he didn’t need it just to kidnap all of you.”

“She’s right,” Jake said. “We don’t know why Crayak and all his Howlers are coming to Ket. It _has_ to be because of The One — otherwise he could go anywhere in the universe, wait for the Ellimist and turn his Geon taser or whatever on him.”

“What do you think, Ax-man?” Marco said, turning to him. “You’re a big-time prince now. What do you do with a formerly invincible enemy?”

<The Ellimist has been around a very long time,> Ax said. <As long as Crayak, perhaps longer. He would have an enormous amount of knowledge about the universe, and much of value, since he did not engage in scorch and burn tactics. The Ellimist would be considerably more valuable alive, but under Crayak’s control.>

And just like that, I knew what Crayak was plotting to do.

“He’s laying a trap,” I said. “Right here — on Ket. He gets the Ellimist to show up, and then he takes what he learned from my brain — and he uses it in a weapon. He incapacitates the Ellimist — and then he uses The One to _recant_ him.”

“And then he’s under Crayak’s thumb, for the rest of eternity,” Jake said. “No more games between them — all bets are off.”

“That leaves Crayak free to destroy everything as we know it,” Cassie said in a low voice. “Every species, every planet…” she trailed off, and we sat in stunned silence.

*

Just then, a light began to flicker on the bridge of the _Rachel_ , and an alarm began to sound. Erek swiveled into the captain’s chair, and Ax pulled himself next to him.

“What is it?” Jake asked.

“Atmospheric alert,” Erek said, sounding tense. He was manipulating dials and pressing buttons. “The atmosphere has… changed. Oxygen levels are dropping considerably — that shouldn’t be possible, nothing has changed.”

“Is it still breathable?” Marco asked. “Or do we need to close the skylight? Is my tan in jeopardy?”

“It is breathable,” Erek said. “The air is thinner, but for now — we are fine.”

<Oxygen loss is dropping off,> Ax said. <It’s not recovering, but — it has stabilized somewhat.>

“Take us to the edge of the cave,” Jake said. “Not all the way out — but enough so we can look outside. We need to see what’s going on.”

<Yes, Prince Jake,> Ax said as the _Rachel_ slid forward.

“Ax, don’t call me — “

Then we saw it.

It was impossible to miss, in the skies above Ket. It loomed like a moon, but one with glittering edges and an insanely jagged skyline.

Crayak was here.

*

<The ship is approximately five-hundred of your Earth miles away, and still approaching.> Ax said. <Its mass is considerable, and the gravitational force it is exerting appears to have affected this planet on a seismic level.>

“Like how the moon affects tides?” Marco asked.

<That analogy is apt.>

“But there’s no water on Ket,” I said. “No oceans, anyway.”

<There is quite a bit of magma beneath the surface,> Ax said. <It appears to have been affected>

“How would that affect the atmosphere?” Cassie asked.

“Ax — _how_ has the air changed?” Jake said. “What’s in place of oxygen?”

<Sulfur, primarily.>

“Volcanoes,” Marco said, shaking his head. “This whole place is a can of Coke, and Crayak’s ship just gave it a big old _shake_. It’s letting off steam wherever it can.”

“Great,” Cassie said. “We’re trapped between hell and the devil.”

“We have to warn the Ellimist,” I said. “Somehow — he has to know that he can’t come here.”

“How is he even going to _get_ the Ellimist here?” Jake said. “If the Ellimist has been turning a blind eye to Ket for — well, basically forever — why would he come now? Crayak would have to lure him in.”

“Erek, Ax — besides the volcanoes, are we reading anything unusual?” Marco said. “Anything that could be an Ellimist dog whistle?”

<I can check frequencies to see if there are any transmissions being  —> Ax started to say as he flipped a dial, but he was cut off when the entire bridge was filled with the shrieking, squeaking noise of feedback. It was excruciatingly loud — we all yelled and plugged our ears.

“Something appears to be transmitting on all frequencies,” Erek said. “Every single one, as far as I can tell — it would take a _substantial_ amount of energy to do that.”

“What are they transmitting?” Jake asked.

<It appears to be some sort of visual transmission,> Ax said. <I believe, with a bit of buffering, we might be able to view it.>

A few more seconds passed, and then the screen above the bridge filled up with images of an alien — multiple aliens — in extreme pain. They were surrounded by the black tendrils of The One, which had ensnared them completely. It forced them together, and we saw the cells of their bodies begin to break down, weaving into each other until they began to coalesce into a single glob of flesh.

In the corner, Marco began to retch. I felt sick, too. These aliens were in great distress as their bodies were broken down and recanted. They were beautiful creatures — they walked on four legs, with spikes on the back of each one. A pair of wings sprouted from their backs, giving them an almost angelic look.

With a jolt, I realized I had seen them before, but not in the flesh. They had been carved out of crystal inside the Ketran ruins — these were the creatures from the sculpture!

Yes — those wings had come from the Ketrans! The spikes were from — what had the Drode called them? The _Ridenya_ , I remembered. They had been one of the first races Crayak had destroyed, but not completely, it turned out. The Ridenya had arrived after the fall of Ket, and the two races, hopelessly broken, had evolved together to produce a new race.

“Why would he be broadcasting the Kelbrid assimilations?” Jake wondered.

We all turned to look at him.

<These are Kelbrids, Prince Jake?> Ax said, sounding surprised.

“Yeah — I’ve seen these before. They aren’t live. Crayak showed them to me when I was on his ship. He was… bragging about it.”

<No one has ever seen a Kelbrid.> Ax said, his stalk eyes glued to the screen. <Prince Jake, you’re certain these are them?>

“Definitely,” Jake said. “And if Crayak is broadcasting these on all frequencies, he must be using it to lure the Ellimist here. But why would the Ellimist care about the Kelbrids…?”

I cleared my throat.

“I think I know,” I said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And just like that... we finally know Crayak's evil plan!
> 
> I am SO EXCITED to share this chapter, and I cannot WAIT until ya'll catch up with what I'm writing now. Some good stuff coming down the pipe.
> 
> Next chapter coming out Thursday, Dec. 20, 9 p.m. ET.


	44. The Kelbrids

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Animorphs call for help, but they get more than they bargained for.

“So the Ketrans survived?”

“Yup.”

“And they became… Kelbrids?”

“How, exactly?”

“I don’t know, Jake,” I said, annoyed. “This all took place over thousands, maybe millions of years. Evolution?”

<Over that period of time, it is quite possible that their species developed a symbiotic relationship,> Ax said.

“Like the Iskoort,” Cassie said. “Remember? That was why Crayak wanted the Iskoort dead in the first place. They were proof that a symbiotic relationship could develop between species, leaving both sides better off.”

“But the Ketran parts are still recognizable — look at the wings,” I said, pointing at the images of the Kelbrids in agony. “The Ellimist will _see_ that. He’ll recognize the Ketran biology. That’s how they’ll bring him here — he thinks his entire species is dead.”

“How could he not know?” Marco wondered. “Isn’t the Ellimist supposed to be, I don’t know, omniscient and stuff?”

“No,” I said. “He’s purposefully ignored Ket since the day he left. And the Kelbrids haven’t been exactly been advertising their presence.”

“That would explain their aggressive attitude toward secrecy,” Erek said. “If the Ketrans were killed because of their broadcasts, they would probably take pains to hoard information about their existence. That’s why no one’s ever seen them. It’s a similar strategy to the one the Chee employ.”

“A people like that would also want to be keyed into every possible means of communication,” Cassie said. “That’s how they knew so much about the Andalites, and the Andalites knew so little about them.”

“You think they’re listening now?” Marco said.

“They must be,” Erek said, pointing again at the screen. “This is being streamed out of Ket en masse — this whole planet is basically a _very_ bright lightbulb in the universe. Every deep-space channel is filled — we can’t punch through the noise.”

“It’s only a matter of time, then,” I said, suddenly feeling hopeless. “If we can’t warn the Ellimist, he’ll show up. There’s nothing we can do.”

“What about local channels?” Marco asked.

“What do you mean?” Erek asked.

“We’re talking HAM radio. AM/FM. Sweatin’ to the oldies.”

We all stared at him. Marco sighed. “Look, the Kelbrids are listening to _everything_ , right? That means they’re getting all _this_ — “ he gestured to the images of the Kelbrids being assimilated — “but they’re also listening to frequencies _no one else_ would be listening in on. We should try and contact them, old-school analog. Rabbit ears, if we need to. Maybe they’ll hear us, and they can warn the Ellimist instead.”

<Any signal we emit could be intercepted by Crayak,> Ax said.

“Why would he? This is the one advantage we have — _Crayak doesn’t know we’re alive_.”

“Good point, but Ax is right,” Jake said. “Is there a way we could encode the message somehow? Something only the Kelbrids would recognize.”

<I’m afraid that will be difficult, as no one has ever heard the Kelbrid language.>

“I have,” I said.

Everyone stared at me.

“I mean — not as it currently is. But I know I few Ketran words, and the language is probably similar, right? It was close enough that I was able to interact with the crystal.”

“It’s worth a shot,” Jake said. “Ax, can you rig up some kind of HAM radio?”

Ax made a sound in thought-speak that sounded disgusted. <Prince Jake, I am a captain in the Andalite military. Any junior-level _aristh_ can make such a device.>

“All right — then make one, immediately,” Jake said. “Rachel, start practicing your Ketran. Cassie, if we actually open up a channel, we’ll need you to be diplomat. Erek, keep analyzing the Howler ships — their movements don’t look random to me. Marco —“

“Yes, dear leader?” Marco said, sounding bemused.

“You and me are going to the galley,” Jake said. “We’re going to make dinner, because I’m _starving_.”

*

Ax was tinkering with a series of wires and crystals. Erek was methodically scanning graphs and drawing lines through them. Cassie was sitting cross-legged with a notepad in her lap, jotting down notes and muttering things like: “Culturally, they might _expect_ an assertion of dominance, responding negatively without it…”

I was making cat-barfing sounds.

It’s not that the Ketran language was ugly — in my memories, it was a beautiful sound, like a warbling bird. The problem was that I wasn’t very good at imitating it.

_“Kerg-kkkck,”_ I squawked, my eyes closed, concentrating.

_< It’s more like… ker-queck.>_

“Ker-queck,” I said.

_< Higher pitch, more emphasis on the second syllable.>_

_“_ Ker-QUECK!”

_< That’s better,> _Jeanne said.

_Do we even know what this word means?_ I asked her. She was poring through Toomin’s memories with me — with a little effort, we had discovered how I could grant her access to them. We were both observers, listening to the phonetic pronunciations, which sounded so melodic when the Ketrans made it, and so… _puky_ … when I did.

“Ker- _queck_ , anxet-toc, sperdeck-ui —“ the word caught in my throat, and I started coughing.

_They’re never going to respond,_ I said hopelessly. _I sound terrible._

_< You managed to get into the crystal, yes?> _Jeanne said. _< You will just have an accent. Zere eez nuzzing wrong with ze accent!>_

I laughed out loud at the way she leaned into a truly terrible French accent. Erek looked to me, frowning, but I just shrugged.

“Inside joke,” I said, giggling even harder at my pun. I tried to speak Ketran again, but I found I had lost my focus, so I walked over to Erek. “What’re the Howlers up to?”

“It is as Jake and I suspected — their movements aren’t random,” Erek said. “There is a definite pattern — two in this sector, three in this one, one here. They seem to repeat some variation of this pattern. The ships are clustered in and above the atmosphere. They’re roughly the same distance apart.”

“What’s at the center?”

“Well — us. By coincidence, I think,” Erek said. “They seem to be aligning with the crystal.”

“Something to do with their Ellimist death frequency?”

“It must be,” he said. “I can’t see how it would work though… But who knows what kind of tech they have in those ships? We probably won’t know until it’s been activated, unfortunately.”

“Lovely,” I said.

<Excuse me,> Ax said. <I’m done. The bacon radio is ready.>

*

“That’s HAM radio, Ax,” Jake said. “Bacon is a name for pigs turned into food.”

<Is not ham — >

“Never mind,” Jake said, rubbing his eyes. “Just — fire it up. Rachel — you ready?”

I nodded, mouthing the Ketran pronunciations. Jeanne and I had decided to go for simple and direct: _Hello. Help us._ We chose the short version to keep complexity at a minimum, since we weren’t sure that my phrasing was quite accurate for longer sentences. We were largely piecing things together the best we could.

<It is ready,> Ax said, pointing at a blinking red button.

I took a deep breath and spoke the Ketran words.

“Bless you,” Marco said. I ignored him and spoke them again. The red light blinked off.

<Transmitting…> Ax said tersely. <We are now playing across several local frequencies. I’ll be rotating the transmission through all available channels every few seconds, in case Crayak is listening.>

A minute went by. Five minutes went by. Ten minutes in, and my heart began to sink. What if they never responded? Seeing the position of the Howlers across the sky, I doubted we would ever be able to escape Ket alive. If the Kelbrids couldn’t hear us, or they were all dead, or they ignored us… we were doomed, and so was the Ellimist, and so was every living being across the universe, sooner or later.

And then: a chirp!

<We have a connection, Prince Jake,> Ax said. <Connecting…> He flipped a switch, but we heard only silence.

“Are they there?” Cassie asked uncertainly.

<I believe so. They are… listening to us,> Ax said.

Cassie sighed with frustration. “That’s not going to work,” she said. “We need direct talks. If they can’t translate to Andalite, or vice versa —“

“Let me try,” I said. “They’re wary of us — they’ve evolved to be wary. Both of their original species were wiped out, remember? We just have to make them understand — they’re on the chopping block too, without us.”

I took a deep breath, and nodded at Ax, who flicked a switch. The red light began to glow. I screwed my eyes up tight and listened to Jeanne whispering to me in my brain.

“ _She-cheteck, fretock… Rachel,”_ I said.

_My name is Rachel._

“ _Tefret… allown.”_

_We are friends._

“Is it just me, or does she have the _slightest_ touch of a French accent?” Marco whispered.

I took a deep breath and nodded at Ax. He flipped the dial, and we watched the speaker, our hearts pounding.

We were completely unprepared when the view screen lit up with an alien face. I gasped — the wings, the spikes, the face — this was a Kelbrid!

“ _Che-fwet, torka? Schente…_ ” the figure chirped in harsh tones.

_Jeanne! What’s he saying?_ I said frantically. The others were looking at me.

_< I can’t tell,> _she said. _< The dialect is different… Toomin’s language is ancient, Rachel — I’m not sure we can use it as a rosetta stone.>_

I hadn’t thought about that — of course the Kelbrid and the Ketran languages would have diverged over millennia — my mom used to say she couldn’t even understand how my sisters and I talked to each other. I looked around at the others, and shook my head helplessly — I didn’t know what to do!

“‘Who are you? Why do you speak the old way?’” Erek said. “That’s what they’re saying — it’s something like that.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

“I’m an ancient android with an ocean of translation databases,” Erek said. “I only need a few words to begin decrypting any language. Listening to you hock up hairballs was enough to get me started. Keep talking, I’ll get more.”

I turned back to the Kelbrid. It was impossible to not see the resemblance — even loosely — to a red-tailed hawk. The curve of the skull, the shape of the beak. The eyes were larger though, and their gaze was clearly intelligent.

“I know what happened to the Ketrans,” I said (or something like it). “I was shown it… in a dream.”

_< Er,>_ Jeanne said.

_What?_

_< You _might _have just told them you want to see them in your dreams. >_

_Oh great,_ I told her. _First time the Kelbrids have a chat in their own tongue, and they think I’m making a pass. At least he’s kind of hot._

_< What?>_

_I’m kidding, oh my God_. 

They said something else, and I looked to Erek.

“‘No one knows the old way but the elders. Have you taken it?’”

“I don’t like where this is going,” Cassie said. “Erek — can they understand English? They do, right? They may be more comfortable communicating in it.”

From the screen, a mechanical voice said: “We understand.”

Cassie took a step closer and stood up straight, taking a deep breath. “Hello. My name is Cassie. This is Erek, Marco, Rachel, Aximili, and Jake. We are from the planet Earth. Do you know of Earth?”

There was a pause, and then we began to hear a series of strange beeps from the view screen. Marco began to laugh, first a chuckle, and then a belly-laugh.

“What?” Cassie asked, baffled.

<I believe Marco is laughing because the Kelbrids appear to be playing a theme song from a popular Earth show,> Ax said. < _The X-Files_ , if I am correct.>

He was right! When you listened closely, it was obvious what the melody was.

Cassie broke into a huge smile and looked at the screen.

“That’s right,” she said. “ _The X-Files_ are a television show that is very popular on Earth. Do you enjoy it?”

*

Apparently, the Kelbrids enjoyed _X-Files_ very much. Cassie was able to use it to establish a level of trust with them, spending a few minutes asking about their favorite episode, or whether they enjoyed Mulder or Scully more (they preferred _Scully_ , thank goodness).

I was bewildered and a little annoyed by it — we had a doom planet literally hanging above our heads! — but as Erek whispered to me, this was Diplomacy 101. Trust between two disparate cultures was often easily gained by discussing aspects of one culture that the other appreciated in some form. We knew absolutely nothing about the Kelbrid culture, so they had to be the ones to reach out.

This was important, I realized: it meant the Kelbrids were willing to engage. That was good for us, but it almost certainly meant that — wherever they were, they were still losing.

“That’s right,” Cassie said, smiling. “ _I want to believe._ And _I want to believe_ that we can work together.” Her face tightened into a frown. “The same force that has attacked your people has attacked us. It gathers in the sky above us. We need your help to stop it.”

*

She explained, as much as she could. The language translations weren’t perfect, and we occasionally had to return to examples from _X-Files_ to get our point across, of which Marco and Ax were experts, apparently.

After about fifteen minutes — we had gotten them up to speed on our situation. But they hadn’t given us anything back, although Cassie had been trying.

“Where are you?” Cassie repeated for the fourth time. “Do you trust us? We want to help you. We want to be your friends.”

Another long pause. Cassie looked back at us helplessly. _There’s not much more I can do,_ she mouthed.

“Rachel,” the mechanical voice said. “We want to speak to Rachel.”

Everyone looked at me. I smiled and took a step forward, strangely at ease. This was a challenge, sure, but it was the first time in a while where I’d been confronted with a situation that probably wouldn’t end in my imminent death.

I looked at the Kelbrid, waiting for him to speak.

_“Chey-stawk, fwentin.”_ He said.

He looked at me. He was expecting something. I looked at Erek, but he shook his head. “That… doesn’t translate,” he said, looking surprised. “It’s… it’s not a _word_.”

_< He’s testing us_,> Jeanne said. _< This must be something from the old days of Ket.>_

We searched my thoughts — I was perched on the crystals, I was playing the games, I was with my old friend Lackofa, who was repeating a phrase…

_Let it pass_. _Let it breeze on by…_

I smiled and repeated the second half of the old Ketran platitude, in a series of squawks and chirps. I understood why it couldn’t translate — it wasn’t exactly as simple as the direct translation in English. It was more like: _The terrible times are behind you, and good times are ahead, but look on the past with nostalgia once in a while, but just a little bit. Don’t let it consume you._ And there was a _lot_ of emotion wrapped up in it, something that would have resonated through the centuries. They had held onto this phrase and kept it unaltered through sheer societal force of will.

The Kelbrid on the screen cried out suddenly and beat his chest with a spiked arm.

<We are receiving data!> Ax said. <They are transmitting — schematics. It seems to be of a space station, the object is very large and complex.>

“Crayak’s ship?” Jake said.

<Yes — a highly detailed rendering of the outside of the vessel. Some of these scans are only an hour old. There are thousands of what appear to be buildings, intricate pathways. The arrangement is interesting, it almost reminds me of an organic structure. The Kelbrids have — > He paused.

“What is it, Ax?”

<They have marked — entrances,> Ax said. <It appears they want us to infiltrate Crayak’s ship.>

*

What followed was a flurry of choppy communication — mostly in English. The Kelbrids didn’t really understand why we needed Ellimist (the best Cassie could make out was that we had a friend we wanted to call). The Kelbrids were desperate and willing to help — but like us, they found every channel to be completely taken up by the shrieking, agonized images of their brethren being assimilated. Despite their excellent spy software, they had no way to get a transmission out of the system, and because of the attacks against their race, they had consolidated their ships into a single pack, and did not dare attempt an escape. Many had been destroyed at the hands of the Super Howlers, it seemed.

What the Kelbrids _did_ have was information — and a lot of it. Crayak’s journey toward Ket had not gone unnoticed, and they had followed it in and out of Z-space, gathering all intelligence possible.

Ax pulled up the schematic on the view screen.

<It is likely that this section here is used for communications,> he said, pointing to an area with a deep chasm with an arcing series of cables. <Were we to get here, it might be possible to cut the transmissions, and send another message.>

“Who cares about a message?” I said, suddenly feeling charged up. “Let’s just go in there and — I don’t know, blow it up or something! There’s got to be some kind of self-destruct button, right?”

“This isn’t the Death Star, Rachel,” Marco said dryly. “I mean, okay, it is _basically_ the Death Star, but it doesn’t just have one _very special spot_ where you shoot it to blow it up.”

“Marco’s right,” Jake said. “We can’t take that thing on. But we might be able to infiltrate it and warn the Ellimist to stay away.”

“What about the warehouse on the ground?” Cassie said. “That’s part of it too — if we could destroy it, it’s possible Crayak’s trap wouldn’t even work.”

“We don’t have that kind of firepower —“ Jake said, but then he stopped, considered, and smiled.

“Erek — you downloaded maps of the facility when you rescued us?” Erek nodded. “Send everything you have to the Kelbrids. They did a pretty good job of bombing it when we were in there — let’s see what kind of damage they can do when they know what to hit.”

*

We explained to the Kelbrids what we planned to do, and what we hoped they would do. Cassie handled the explanations solemnly, and they responded in turn. We wished each other luck, and, as one more measure, I whispered an old Ketran phrase.

_Let it pass. Let it breeze by…_

The Kelbrid made a face that I now recognized to be a smile, and then the transmission ended.

“ _Whew!_ ” Cassie said. “That was a _rush_ , wasn’t it?” She took a step, frowned and said, “You know, I think I’m a little dehydrated.”

And then she fainted into Jake’s arms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For hardcore fans, by a hardcore fan.
> 
> We're about to leap into the final act of the story, I'm so glad you're here with me!
> 
> I was so pumped to write this chapter, and I was so encouraged at the responses to the big Kelbrid reveal! If you wondered, "What the heck was up with that weird sculpture stuff?" -- this twist was why. Foreshadowing is fun!
> 
> A little update on the writing: I'm currently eight chapters ahead, in the middle of the last stretch of action-packed-ness. I'm feeling a little nervous as I approach the ending — I'm doing my best to make it satisfying, but sometimes it feels like I'm in the middle of the forest, and it's hard to see the bigger picture! This whole thing is largely a first draft with relatively superficial editing. The point was to force me to write and release consistently, and so far, it's been great for that. I hope these last fifteen chapters or so are as fun to follow as they've been to write.
> 
> Oh, and if the X-Files seemed a little goofy, that was intentional -- it wouldn't be Animorphs without some cheese 90s references thrown in. 
> 
> Next chapter coming out Saturday, Dec. 22 at 9 p.m. ET.


	45. Dinner

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Animorphs prepare to board Crayak's ship.

We panicked — albeit briefly. Jake lowered Cassie to the floor, and the rest of us clustered around her, but it only took a minor jolt of electricity from Erek to revive her.

“Ow!” Cassie yelped, waking up immediately. “What was that for?!”

“You kind of ate it,” Marco said. “Straight up _swooned_ into Jake.”

“Oh,” she said, looking embarrassed. “Sorry.”

“Are you okay?” Jake said, staring at her intensely.

“Yes,” she said. “I mean — I’m feeling a little weak, but yes.”

“You haven’t eaten anything since the Andalite shamrock shakes,” Erek said, and then to Marco. “Didn’t you say you were making dinner?”

*

Part of me wanted us to head straight for Crayak’s ship, but another part of me was extremely hungry. Besides, the Chee holograms weren’t fully charged yet, and we needed every bit of energy to stay hidden long enough to reach the access point. And we all agreed that it would be best if we approached Crayak’s ship after the sun had set, under the cover of darkness.

So we retreated to the galley, where Jake and Marco had scavenged a host of non-perishables from the _Rachel’s_ pantry. The meal wasn’t fancy, but there was a lot of it: baked beans, topped with salsa. A whole lot of apple sauce, and crackers with peanut butter. Ax had monopolized (but was showing remarkable restraint) a case of spam.

“Oh my _God_ where did you find Ranch dressing?!” Cassie exclaimed. “I’m going to pour it on anything. I’ll eat it with a _spoon_ if I have to.”

I bit into a granola bar that tasted like heaven. My eyes were actually watering. “How long were you planning to be gone?” I said, through a mouthful of crunch. “There’s a lot of stuff back there.”

“There wasn’t much of a plan,” Jake said, shrugging. “Menderash said we had enough fuel to last us a hundred years, so I guess if we had run out of food, we could have just gotten more from Earth.”

Marco got a funny look on his face. “That reminds me…” he muttered, and left the room.

“ _That_ was your great plan?” Cassie said. “Jet off into space and just… poke around for the Blade Ship? That was the best the Andalites could do?”

Jake shrugged. “When you say it like that… yeah. It doesn’t sound like much. But the Andalites seemed to know where to go? They really wanted Ax back.”

Ax, having heard his name, looked up from a pile of canned meat and cheez wiz, some of it dangling from his chin.

“I w-w-would have been a great l-l-loss to the military,” he said. Then after a second: “I h-h-ope I do not sound arrogant.”

“Eh,” I said, as a piece of dangly cheese dropped from his mouth to the floor. “You seem pretty humble to me.”

“Hey, hey, hey!” Marco re-entered, carrying a small chest. “Look what I found — Menderash’s secret stash!”

Ax was suddenly alert, looking concerned. “M-military secrets? Was h-he entrusted with classified documents?”

Marco opened the box and pulled out a Twinkie. “Only if classified documents are sweet and signed _Lil Debbie._ ”

Ax’s eyes widened, and his mouth fell open.

“I would… like that…” he whispered, and all of us laughed.

*

For the next thirty minutes, we were all just kids again. We might have been five mall rats in the food court, throwing bits of our meals at each other, cracking bad jokes, teasing each other and arguing.

At one point, Jake and Marco began an evergreen debate: who would win in a fight, Batman or Superman? I rolled my eyes and turned to Cassie, who looked equally bemused.

“Hey, you were _amazing_ back there,” I said. “Like — you just made contact with a hardcore, super paranoid alien race, and because of it, we might have a chance.”

She smiled, almost shyly. “A lot of that was luck, though. If they weren’t so desperate —“

“It wasn’t luck,” I said firmly. “You took a complex situation filled with unknowns and you kicked butt. I couldn’t have done that. _Jake_ couldn’t have done that.”

“Thanks,” she said, just as Jake exclaimed in a baffled tone: “ _A Kryptonite dart?!”_

“What did you _say_ to Jake, by the way?” I asked her, in a lower voice. “The dude was Mr. Mopey forty-five minutes ago, then he sobs his eyes out, and now it’s like he and Marco are about to shoot some hoops.”

“I told him the truth,” Cassie said carefully. “I told him I thought he had died, and I had accepted that I would never see him again. And that, while I’m glad he’s alive, I would much rather have not gotten involved and never see him again.”

“Oof,” I said. “That’s when he cried?”

“No,” she said, “He just got sad at first, said I deserved someone better and that he was worthless — a real pity party. I got sick of it real quick, so I yelled at him and told him that he was the best damn leader we ever had, and because of him, our families were free and the human race had both a future and a spot at the galactic table, and if he didn’t like it then he could hop through a s _ario rip_ and undo it all.”

She took a sip of water. “I think he understood,” she said smoothly.

*

There was one person at that table I hadn’t yet had a meaningful conversation with: Jake.

And I could tell that he knew it too. He kept stealing little glances at me, always looking nervous, a little afraid. Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore.

“Hey, Jake, got a minute?”

He nodded slowly. I jerked my head toward the doorway, and he followed.

“So Cassie,” I heard Marco saying as we walked outside. “What was that thing, about the thing, that did the thing?”

“Oh, the _thing_ ,” Cassie said, loudly, as I shut the door.

“I’m sorry,” Jake said, as soon as it was closed. He looked both earnest and pained. “I’m sorry I sent you to die. I’m sorry I sent you to kill Tom. There hasn’t been a day that went by that I haven’t regretted it, that I haven’t thought of what I did to you — “

“Stop,” I said. And he did — mid-word. “I know why you did what you did. But you have to remember — it was my choice.”

“I ordered you to go. If it wasn’t for me — “

“But I was the one who turned into a flea and sat on your brother’s head,” I said firmly. “I’ve got all my memories back. I remember everything. You told me to go, but I was _excited_ for it. The way I was, I don’t — “ I took a deep breath. “I’m trying to say that, nothing would have been enough. I was ready for something to kill me. I was _expecting_ it to happen. You get what I’m saying?”

“Yeah,” Jake said, solemnly. “Yeah, I… Yeah.”

We stood there in silence for a few seconds, a shared pain hanging between us.

“I miss Tom,” he said. “I tried to go back to a regular school, for a little while. Something like it, anyway. They had basketball tryouts. It made me think of — when Tom played. When it was really him.”

“Did you make the team?” I asked.

He snorted. “Are you kidding me? Every club was trying to recruit me. We’re _famous_ now. The high school musical offered me a lead role in _Swiss Family Robinson._ ”

“That’s dumb,” I said. “They should have had you play the tiger.”

He smiled, but he still looked sad.

“I miss Tom, too,” I said. “And I wish there had been another way, but we were scared, and we were out of options.”

“Those aren’t excuses.”

“No,” I agreed. “But our excuses can help us understand, and they can help us move forward.”

He nodded. “It’s good… to be alive again. I never thought I’d be standing here. When that thing was inside my head… Crayak… I’d given up everything.”

“You got lost,” I said. 

A memory from the war slipped into my head, perfectly coherent. I was driving a truck toward National Guard troops. I was shouting that we needed to run them down. Ax and my mother were next to me, arguing with me. They succeeded, and I screamed at them in frustration.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I got lost too. But we’re together again. We have a chance, now.”

My emotions suddenly gave way to something colder and more focused.

“We have to make Crayak pay,” I said. “I don’t know how. Maybe just by screwing up his plan with with the Ellimist. But he hurt all of us. He hurt Tobias. He can’t get away with that.”

Jake nodded slowly.

“He doesn’t get away with it,” he said.

“There’s one other thing, Jake. When the time comes to board Crayak’s ship — I’m going.”

“Rachel — ”

“No matter what Cassie says, or whatever guilt you have about the Blade Ship — I’m not staying here,” I said. “You know I can’t sit this one out.”

He closed his eyes and spoke his next words infuriatingly slowly: “Rachel — you can’t morph. And we won’t be able to protect you. And — don’t get mad — we might not _need_ you. This is a stealth mission. We get in, we get a message to the Ellimist, we get out.”

I was getting angry now. “I can’t just sit here! While you’re off risking your lives, and Tobias is — Tobias is — “ 

“Ah,” Jake said, a sad smile settling over his face. “So that’s what this is about.”

“NO!” I snapped. “I mean — yes — but — it’s more than that. _You need me_.”

“If you could morph, sure,” Jake said, his voice becoming colder. “But — and I know this sounds harsh — you’re _vulnerable. Y_ ou could get us all killed.”

“But — “

“That’s enough, Rachel,” he said. “I’m ordering you to stay behind.”

He tried to step past me, but I grabbed his arm.

“Jake, you do need me,” I said. “You know you you do, you just don’t want to say it.”

His eyes narrowed. “What are you talking about?”

“What happens when things go bad, huh? What happens when the Drode freezes time and orders the Hork Bajir to rip you all apart? This isn’t a _game_ anymore, Jake — Crayak is _done_ playing those. He’s not afraid to break the rules.”

“If you have a point, make it.”

“There are two things Crayak has wanted this whole time: your head on a stick, and psycho Rachel sitting beside him tearing up the universe.”

His jaw dropped. “You aren’t saying — “

“I’m saying — if things go wrong, _use me._ I could be the bargaining chip you need to get out of a tough situation. You can’t afford to leave me behind.”

He shook his head. “That’s ridiculous. That’s — “

“It’s not like — it’s not like you haven’t been thinking about it,” I said, and thought I tried my hardest to keep my voice from cracking with emotion, it did anyway, and from the way he froze, I could tell that he noticed. “I’ll do what needs to be done. Like I did with David. I was your enforcer. I was the thing that made your problems not your problems anymore.”

“That was wrong,” Jake muttered. “I shouldn’t have done that. I feel worse about that than I do killing the seventeen-thousand-seven-hundred-and-thirty-two Yeerks. You were my family, and I… I treated you like a _hammer_.”

“I hope it doesn’t come to that again,” I said. “But if it does — I’ll do it. And maybe I don’t have to die this time. Maybe you can be the ones rescuing me. _But none of this matters if we don’t save the Ellimist._ If it’s him, or me — you have to let me go. You have to let me try.”

“Don’t do this,” Jake said. His eyes were pleading with me. “You’re an Animorph. You’re one of us. We can’t lose you again. I can’t lose you again.”

I was torn between the urge to yell at him and hug him, so I did both, wrapping my arms around his shoulders and whispering fiercely: “But I’m not an Animorph anymore. Not really. 

“But you _are_ ,” I said, directly into his ear. “And you have to do the right thing.”

*

We heard a loud clattering from inside the galley, and Marco and Cassie began to yell. Jake pulled away and sprang into action, yanking the door open.

“ _Put! That! Down!”_ Cassie shouted. Marco was on the floor on his back, cowering beneath a saucepan. Ax was perched on the table in human morph, wild-eyed and with his face slathered in… everything. He was holding a fork in one hand and a large colander in the other.

“Give me the Cinnabon!” he snarled.

“Ax!” Jake roared. “What are you doing?”

Ax blinked, Jake’s voice registering. “He h-h-has the Cinnabon, Prince Jake,” Ax said. “The l-l-last Cinnabon. _Give it to me._ ”

“Okay, okay!” Marco said, throwing some kind of blackened chunk at him. “Don’t get mad at me if you get some freaky space-mold disease!”

“Apparently, Menderash packed a whole lot of cinnamon rolls upon leaving Earth,” Cassie said. “He stashed them all over the place, but I guess he forgot a couple — Marco just made the unfortunate mistake of finding one.”

Ax was tearing into the roll with a vengeance.

“An _old_ one,” she added wryly.

Jake sighed. “You know what we should have done, early on? We should have shot Cinnabons into space. That would have brought the Andalites to Earth real fast…”

The intercom sputtered to life, causing us all to pause.

“Excuse me,” Erek said. “The sun is setting. It’s time.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We were past due for a lighter-toned chapter -- hopefully you enjoyed the change of pace!
> 
> One thing I will never, ever tire of are "Andalites go crazy when they eat human food" jokes. So dumb, but they always make me laugh.
> 
> Hope ya'll have a wonderful holiday - I'm headed back to my homeland for a few days of Christmas-related festivities, but the next few chapters are queued up and ready to go, so I don't expect any disruption in the release cycle.
> 
> Next chapter to be released Monday, Dec. 24 at 9 p.m. ET.


	46. The Handshake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For once, Rachel isn't the elephant in the room.

**** “Between Lourdes and I, we have enough energy to maintain a convincing hologram,” Erek said.

“How convincing?” Jake asked.

“Light-absorbing. It won’t fool anyone up close, but from a distance, we’ll blend into space.”

“That might not be good enough — can we divert more power?”

“Jake, they’re not looking for us,” Marco said. “They think we’re dead, dude. D-E-A-D.”

“And this _doesn’t_ go against your programming?”

Jake’s words carried an unmistakable edge, and I could sense the tension in the room rise. I realized that they still hadn’t discussed their last interaction, the one that happened shortly after my death.

“It does not,” Erek said slowly.

“What if we’re spotted by the Howlers, and we need to return fire?” Jake asked.

“Jake — “ Marco started to say, but Jake waved his hand.

“This is _important_ , Marco. If we have to do something to stay alive, and Erek can’t help us, then we need to know ahead of time. Am I going to have to threaten to kill someone so you can choose the lesser of two evils?”

“That’s not fair — “ Erek started to say, but then Jake _exploded._

“None of us would be here if it wasn’t for you! If you hadn’t powered down the Pool Ship, we would have shot the Blade Ship out of the sky!” He yelled. “You call yourself a pacifist, but because of you, Crayak has a pretty good shot at tearing the universe apart. You _still_ want to tell me that you’re _right?_ You still want to pretend that you’re _better_ than us, because you chose not to fight?”

A few seconds passed, and Erek said, slower, and softer: “That’s not fair to put on me, knowing what you know about me. It wasn’t fair that I was put into a position and coerced to do horrible things. No matter your justification, that doesn’t make it right.”

“I wish I could hurt you,” Jake said, but he sounded more upset than angry. “I know that’s a horrible thing to say, but I really do. If you knew how much I hurt, after the war. How much I wondered what if — “

“It wasn’t fair what I did to you, either,” Erek interrupted. “I’ve been around a very long time. I have a wealth of experience. The more experience one has, the more self-assured they are… the more likely they are to make a series of devastating mistakes.

“I am truly sorry, for what I did to all of you,” Erek said. “I thought I could honor my creators by staying hidden on the sidelines, helping you with your fight. After what happened at Matcom, I couldn’t imagine fighting again. I couldn’t stand the memory of it. I _can still feel it,_ fresh in my head — “

Around us, the battle of Matcom appeared. Erek was projecting his memories, the ones that stayed forever fresh. Matcom was where the Yeerks had stashed their Pemalite crystal, under heavy surveillance. We had stolen the crystal — but then we had been quickly overwhelmed.

In the images from Ererk’s memory, Hork-Bajir and Human Controllers teemed out of doorways, shooting and slashing at us. And then Erek got ahold of the crystal, and in a fraction of a second he removed all limitations the Pemalites had woven around him. He dove into the aliens with intensity — a relish, even — ripping through them the way a child might bound through snow.

Next to me, I heard Cassie gasp. Marco groaned. They didn’t remember this, but I did. I had seen all ten seconds of it, when it happened. Limbs flung through the air. The ceiling was splattered with their blood.

At the end of it, he dragged us _through_ those impenetrable walls to safety, and then he had wept from the pain of having murdered.

“I reset my programming,” Erek said. “I told myself I did it because what I did was wrong. But that wasn’t true, not exactly. I did it because I was _afraid_. I was afraid to go down that path. I was afraid of where it would lead me. So I bowed out, and instead I sent children to fight the battles I couldn’t. And that wasn’t fair to you. And I’m sorry.”

He stopped talking, and we turned to Jake, who was staring at Erek, looking dumbfounded.

“So, can you do it?” Jake finally said. “If the Howlers start firing at us, are we going to be able to fire back?”

“Well — “ Erek said.

“General Jake, you’re missing the big picture,” Marco said, clapping a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “It doesn’t matter if Erek can fire at the Howlers or not. There’s so many of them out there, that if they spot us — we’re dead meat, scorched and burned. This is the exact time we _don’t_ want to go out guns blazing, because we don’t stand a chance.”

“Oh,” Jake said, surprise blooming across his face.

“I believe I can get you to Crayak’s ship, undetected,” Erek said. “We can stay in touch via the radio Aximili constructed — if you manage to send a warning to the Ellimist, I will attempt to extract you. You are correct — I cannot fire on any ship. But if you choose to do this, I will be there for you, however it ends.”

He extended his android hand, almost tentatively. Jake stared at it.

“We aren’t friends,” he said slowly. “And if we manage to get out of this, I don’t ever want to see you again. There’s too much. Maybe you can get past it, but I can’t.”

“Jake,” Cassie said, touching his arm. “Don’t let this poison you.”

“How can you say that?” Jake said. “After he manipulated you into coming here?”

“Oh, I’m still mad at him,” Cassie said. “It’s going to be a long time before I forgive, and I won’t ever forget. But I’m not going to dwell on it. I’m not going to let it stew in the back of my mind.”

“You don’t understand,” Jake said angrily.

“Don’t _understand?_ I’ve been inside your head, Jake Berenson!” Cassie snapped. “You have a good reason to be mad at Erek, _sure_. But that’s not why you hold onto it. 

“You’ve replayed every decision you made during the war hundreds of times. Because of how it ended — and because he’s standing here in front of you, you can blame it on Erek. And yeah, sure, he screwed up. But you’ve spent long enough struggling to move past his bad decisions. You don’t need to be friends. You don’t even need to _like_ each other. But you do need to _trust_ each other. Either all of us get out of this alive, or none of us do. That’s the situation right now. It’s not complicated.

“You’re still our leader,” she said. “Start acting like it.”

Through all of this, Jake’s face was cold and expressionless. When she finished, he took a long, deep breath, thinking heavily for a few seconds.

“You’re right,” he finally said. “We’re all on the same side. We need to work together now. That’s the most important thing. We will warn the Ellimist, and we will get home alive.”

He reached out, took Erek’s mechanical hand, and shook it.

The next words came out in a rush, as if he wasn’t expecting to say them. “And I’m sorry I forced you to — to choose.” His face turned red. “I regretted — that is a decision that I regret.”

“I appreciate that,” Erek said.

They let go.

I looked at Erek, then at Jake, and back to Erek. They would never be buddies, I realized. They would never hang out, never grab coffee, never talk about a movie each had seen. If we got out of this alive, they would probably never talk to each other again. But the distrust between them seemed to have dissipated, and if that was enough to save the universe, so be it.

“So,” I said, clapping my hands. “Are we headed to the Death Star, or what?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy holidays, everyone! If you're following along with the recommended readings and want to get a full recap of Matcom (albeit told from Marco's limited perspective) pick up a copy of book #10 and read the last few chapters (or just read the whole thing — that's a great one).
> 
> If you're celebrating Christmas tomorrow, please enjoy your family, friends and lots and lots of food! Eat up, because in two days, we're headed straight for Mordor (Crayak's ship).
> 
> Next chapter to be released Wednesday, Dec. 26 at 9 p.m. ET.


	47. Black Canyons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Animorphs sneak into Crayak's airspace.

We settled on our plan: under the cover of darkness, and using a low-powered but effective Chee hologram, Erek and Lourdes would remain behind on the _Rachel_ with Tobias. The rest of us would slip onto Crayak’s ship, to an access point determined to be just under a mile from a communications tower.

Cassie interjected at this part, as I expected she would.

“You mean — everyone but Rachel?” She asked Jake. “We’ll all be cockroaches or something, right?”

“I’m going,” I said firmly.

“Rachel and I talked about this,” Jake said evenly. He wasn’t looking at me. “She’s convinced me that we need her there.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Cassie argued. “If she can’t morph, she can’t hide. We won’t be able to protect her.”

“I’ve made my decision,” Jake said, raising his voice slightly. “You asked me to lead — this is me leading.”

She closed her mouth and looked ready to fight. I felt my body tense up; I was ready to unleash all my reasons on her. But Jake shot her another look, cold and intense. Cassie exhaled slowly, and I saw her down. I breathed a silent sigh of relief. If things went well, then Cassie was right, and I wouldn’t be very helpful. But if they didn’t go well —

I shook my head, pushing the scenario out of my head. I couldn’t get pulled in by _what ifs._ If things went bad, they stood a better chance with me there.

“Here’s the deal,” Jake said, turning back to Erek. “If we don’t come back, you can’t wait for us. If we die, Crayak’s secrets will die with us. That _can’t_ happen. You and Lourdes need to get back to Earth and warn anyone — everyone you can. Maybe the Andalite military could stop him, I don’t know. _The fight can’t end if we do._ Understood?”

Erek nodded slowly. “How long do you want me to wait?”

Jake started to reply, but then he paused. “What do you guys think?” He said, asking us. “Keep in mind — if we run out of time, or things aren’t looking good — you’ve got to have enough time to get back to the _Rachel.”_

<We should not have far to travel,> Ax said. <An Earth-mile would be unlikely to take more than eighteen of your minutes.>

“We don’t know if we have a straight shot, though,” Cassie pointed out. “What if we run into some Howlers or something? That could slow us down.”

“Or kill us,” Marco chirped.

“Oh, it’s not so bad,” I said.

Jake held up a hand. “I was thinking — how does two hours sound?”

“Easy enough to remember,” Marco said.

“That’s tight,” I said, frowning. “But I guess — if we don’t move fast enough, it won’t really matter.”

<It is ample time,> Ax said. <Ideally, we would return within an hour. The Ellimist could appear at any moment. We want to move quickly.>

“Good,” Jake said. To Erek: “Two hours after we leave, you get out of here, whether we’re here or not. And you raise alarms anywhere you can. It’s all on you after that. Understood?”

Erek nodded slowly. 

And that’s how we found ourselves facing a ticking clock, just like how it used to be.

*

Erek brought the _Rachel_ out of the cave. We began to move toward the upper Ketran atmosphere, keeping as far away from the Howler ships as we could. We watched, tense, waiting for them to turn and come after us. But none of them did. Lourdes stood with us at the bridge, leaning against the wall, one hand placed on Erek’s back, a cord connecting the two of them as they powered the hologram. They looked calm and focused.

The closer we got to Crayak’s ship, the more frightening it appeared.

“Once we reach the communications tower, Ax figures out a way to ping the Ellimist. We’ll radio Erek and tell him we’re heading back, and then we’ll get out.”

“What’s that?” Cassie asked, suddenly alert. “Through the windows — look!”

Flickers across the sky — the Kelbrids were bombing the warehouse on Ket!

<This is good,> Ax said. <The Howlers’ attentions will be focused on the Kelbrids. I would say that our chances of survival have increased by a fraction of a percent.>

“Ax?” Marco said.

<Yes, Marco?>

“Shut up.”

*

We emerged from the atmosphere slowly, bypassing the Howler ships.

“I advise everyone to be as silent as possible,” Erek said in a low voice. “It is incredibly unlikely they would be scanning with sonar, but let’s not risk it.”

“It’s like _The Hunt for Red October_!” Marco whispered excitedly, and then in a truly terrible imitation of Sean Connery: “ _Mother of God!”_

_“_ Marco, shut _up_ ,” Jake hissed.

One of Ax’s stalk eyes twitched slightly at Marco, as if amused.

*

On Crayak’s ship, we were surrounded by silent black canyons. Up close, they glittered with sparkling lights. I remembered this from the Drode’s visions: the barrack-style buildings, tucked against each other like enormous blocks in a maze. We navigated it silently, swiftly, every one of us focused on the task at hand.

“We’re approaching the access point,” Erek said in a careful whisper.

He lowered us beneath an overhang, then tipped the nose of the ship upwards. In front of us was an enormous door, flesh-colored with enormous, swooping spirals.

“How are we going to get in?!” Cassie whispered suddenly. “We don’t have any codes, we don’t know how to — “

It _whooshed_ smoothly open.

“Crayak doesn’t seem to have a security system on the airlocks,” Erek said. “I suspected as much, with how quickly the Howlers enter an exit. They just open automatically.”

“He’s the most evil being in the universe, and his doors don’t lock?!” Cassie said, incredulous.

“Why would he?” I murmured, as we _swooshed_ on through. “No one’s ever gotten close enough to sneak in.”

*

No one was waiting for us inside. The hangar was empty — perhaps all the Howlers had been deployed to the skies above Ket. The whole thing was illuminated by those glowing red lights, flickering in the darkness.

I watched the other Animorphs strip down to their morphing suits, strangely feeling out of place because I wasn’t wearing a leotard or bike shorts. Marco began to morph gorilla — he was charged with going first.

“All right,” Jake said, when they were finally ready. “Erek, open the hatch. These two hours are starting now.”

The _Rachel_ opened up silently, and Marco clambered off, dangling from an arm the size of a small tree-trunk. He carried the equivalent of a walkie-talkie in his other hand, a modification of the HAM radio that we would use to stay in touch with Erek.

<All clear,> he said. <Smells a little funky, but maybe that’s just _Rachel’s_ exhaust. >

I rolled my eyes.

“Ax, Cassie — your turn,” he said.

I turned around and saw Cassie as a wolf hop forward, slipping out next to Marco. Ax followed, watching his step as he descended the gangplank.

“Finally,” I said, cracking my knuckles and starting to walk forward. “Let’s do it!”

“Wait,” Jake said, as orange fur began to sprout up his arms. “You come last. Sorry, Rachel, it’s the — “ his voice cut out, but he switched to thought-speak. <— safest option. Once I give an all clear, you follow.>

I resisted the urge to argue with him, nodding and grinding my teeth. Jake completed his morph and hopped outside. Marco, Cassie and Ax spread out, establishing a defensive perimeter.

“What?”

Erek, behind me, spoke in a voice filled with astonishment. I turned back to him, suddenly hyper aware.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, peering at the rows of lights and dials in front of him, as if I would be able to interpret what they meant better than he could. “What is it?”

He looked at me, and just for a second, his human hologram flashed up, looking sad and frightened.

And then two things happened at once. 

I realized that Jake was communicating with Erik via private thought-speak.

Erek pressed a button, and the _Rachel_ ’s hatch snapped shut.

*

<I’m sorry, Rachel,> Jake said. <We can’t lose you again.>

“This is NOT what we agreed to!” I shouted at the hatch. I was beyond furious, screaming at the door, banging on it with my bare fists.

<If you’re saying something — and knowing you, you’re pretty ticked at me right now — I can’t hear you. And I know you don’t agree with me, but you’re in the best place you could be right now.>

<Jake is right,> Cassie said. <You’ve still got a broken rib and some deep cuts. This isn’t the place for you right now, and you know it.>

“YOU DON’T GET TO DECIDE THAT!” I screamed, even though I knew they couldn’t hear me. “THIS IS WHO I AM! This is what I _do_!”

<Take care of Tobias, Rachel. He’s depending on you,> Jake said. And then, in private thought-speak, so no one but me could hear, he said: <I know you’re ready to give yourself up to Crayak. And that’s brave of you. I think you’ve always been the bravest of us. But I’ve changed, Rachel. And I can’t use you to win my battles any more. I was wrong back then. I won’t do it again. You’re so much more than an enforcer. You matter — you’re so much more than that.>

And then there was no more thought-speak, and they were gone.

“Open the door!” I shouted at Erek. “Right now!”

“I’m not going to do that,” Erek said.

“You _have_ to,” I shouted. “They can’t do this without me — “

“Of course they can. T _hink_ , Rachel,” Erek said. “Their goal is stealth. That has never been one of your strong points.”

“If they get in trouble, what will they do?” I asked.

“What would _you_ do?” Erek pointed out. “You can’t go grizzly, or elephant. You can’t fight your way out of anywhere. You’re no longer helpful in a battle.”

I made a sound somewhere between a scream and a snarl. I was so angry that tears were trickling out of my eyes.

“It isn’t _fair_ ,” I said. “I didn’t get to be there at the end, last time, when they crashed this ship. I should be there now. _I should be with them._ ”

“Listen to yourself,” Erek said. “This is old Rachel talking, the one who barrels in, guns blazing. Didn’t you learn anything from dying? _That doesn’t always work.”_

With an unpleasant start, I realized that Erek was right. I was angry _because_ I wasn’t on the front lines. An eagerness had been growing in me ever since I realized we were headed for Crayak’s ship. It wasn’t unlike what I had experienced during the fight against the Yeerks — but this time around, it had come on much faster. Now that I remembered everything, had my old bloodthirstiness really reasserted itself so quickly?

_Jeanne? Are you there?_

_< Always.>_

_Am I… am I wrong?_

She took a while to respond.

_< Oui. You have a fierce heart, Rachel. But now is not your time.>_

I sighed, closing my eyes. Why was this so difficult to accept?

_< For so long, your greatest strength was being the one willing to dive in,> _Jeanne said. _< It defined you. It made you who you are. But you’re someone else now. You must be more than who you used to be.>_

_Am I… am I really anything else?_

_< Of course you are,> _Jeanne said warmly. _< Aren’t you a human? Aren’t you a woman? You were those things before you were a tool of war, and you still are those things, now.>_

She was right, of course. And — as much as I hated to admit it, so was Jake. I had to be more than everything I remembered. I had to be more than a battering ram. I had to be more than a gung-ho soldier.

But… where did that leave me?

“This is hard,” I grumbled, sinking down to the floor.

“Indeed,” Erek said, easing back into the chair. “Waiting… sucks.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And... we're off!
> 
> But... without Rachel?!! That's got to be a mistake!
> 
> Nope. Jake doesn't just sentence his cousin to death and stew with his decision for years without it changing him. So he's made a pretty intense decision to sideline her.
> 
> But we're far from the end of this story — and she's still got a role to play.
> 
> Next chapter to be released Friday, Dec. 28 at 9 p.m. ET.


	48. The Mission

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As time runs out, Rachel lobbies Erek for a chance to fight.

**** For thirty minutes, all went as expected. I sat next to Erek as he communicated with the Animorphs via radio. I was furious, and not so mad I couldn’t speak, but they were in a dangerous place, and I wasn’t about to make it worse.

They only communicated intermittently. Since the radio wasn’t thought-speak compliant, it required a physical human being speaking into it. That was usually Cassie, since she was the fastest morpher.

“We’re largely following pipes in the direction you specified,” Cassie said,twenty minutes in. “There isn’t a lot of light — most of these corridors are sparse, and have little use. We’ve been going bat, that seems to be letting us move the fastest. The radio is heavy. We’ve come to a more well-lit area, and there’s signs of more activity. We’re going to try house flies, and Ax is going to go raccoon to guide us. We’ll see how that goes.”

“Got it,” Erek said. “No change on our end. All quiet here.”

He was monitoring all the frequencies he could, but they still all showed the same images of Kelbrid assimilation. Every second they were broadcast, the more I worried. The Ellimist could show up any minute, and if he stumbled into Crayak’s trap, we were done for.

I spent the next fifteen minutes practicing my evil eye on Erek, who was doing his best to ignore me.

_< It’s not his fault, not really,> _Jeanne said. _< He followed an order from Jake, for once.>_

_I know_ , I said. _But I’m not any less ticked off about it._

The radio chirped.

“Marco here — we seem to have taken a wrong turn, and we’re at a dead end. What direction are we supposed to be headed?”

Erek pressed his button. “Northeast, 23 degrees.”

“Yeah, we started doing that, we’re pretty sure. We’re headed northwest now. What?”

Pause, we could hear people talking in the background. “Ax-man says his internal gyroscope is screwed up. He thinks maybe Ket’s magnetic field is throwing it off? We’re backtracking. I think we needed to take a right instead of left.

“Not much to see otherwise — we’ve seen one foot soldier so far, just a Gedd kinda lurching around. It didn’t see us.”

“Roger,” Erek said. “All quiet here.”

“A Gedd?” I asked when the silence came back. “From the Yeerk homeworld? Here?”

“It would make seem that Crayak controls members of many, many species to fight for him,” Erek said.

“But it’s a _Gedd_. They aren’t, uh, known for their battle-hardiness.” I thought for a second. “Maybe it’s a survivor of the Blade Ship. Maybe it’s still controlled by a Yeerk.”

“That would require Crayak to have a portable Kandrona,” Erek said.

“Or have a stockpile of instant maple and ginger oatmeal,” I muttered.

The radio crackled. “Something is wrong,” Marco said. “We’re in a more heavily populated area now — some kind of barrack-style facility. This doesn’t look like communications. We’re just outside of this massive atrium area. I don’t think that — “ A pause, and then we heard shouting in the background. “Someone is coming, we need to — “

We heard a tiger’s growl from the radio, and then it cut out completely.

Erek waited several minutes before trying to contact them, in case they weren’t in a secure area. But we received no response, and we had no confirmation that our signal had even gone through. As the minutes went by, I grew more concerned.

*

We had five minutes until the two-hour mark, and there was no sign of them. Erek had begun to warm up the engines — I could feel them cycling beneath me, and I hated it.

_We’re really just going to leave?!_ I said to Jeanne.

_< It is what Jake ordered,>_ she said, but I sensed uncertainty in her voice, and I seized on it.

_Jake’s orders also got both of us killed!_ I snapped. _You really want to just walk away now? After all this?_

She didn’t respond. The timer ticked down, second by second. Three minutes left, now.

_< No,> _she said finally. _< If we die, I want to go out fighting.>_

I turned to Erek. “Open the door,” I said.

“No,” Erek replied. “We agreed to this. It’s time to go. Jake didn’t want — “

“Jake’s not here,” I said, keeping my voice level. “And — okay, maybe he was right leaving me behind. They were safer without me, I’ll give him that. _But that was then._ There’s no point in me going back to Earth now — not if Crayak is going to come swooping in to kill us all.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Erek said. “Your family — your sisters — “

“They already think I’m dead,” I said, my heart catching in my throat. “In five years, they — they’ve probably moved on. If I die now and they don’t know, at least they won’t relive that grief. I won’t go back. I won’t go back knowing that I didn’t do everything I could to save them — to save everyone. We _have_ to warn the Ellimist. Nothing else matters _._ ”

Erek looked unsure. “We agreed to a time limit. We’re about to pass that.”

“One more hour,” I said, as firmly as I could. “Give me one hour to find them, and bring them back. No one’s noticed the _Rachel_ in two hours — you can spare one more. If none of us are back by then — or they’re back, and I’m not — you head for Earth.”

Erek was shaking his head. Lourdes, who had thus far been silent, reached out and touched his arm.

“We have made too many decisions for them,” she said gently. “It isn’t up to us to choose their fate. She knows the risks. She accepts them.

“Besides,” she added, after a few seconds had passed. “I would be lying if I said I didn’t want revenge for what they did to me.” She looked in my eyes, all of her holograms flickering rapidly, each of them displaying cold, vicious fury. “Even as they tortured me, I cradled your _ixcila._ I clung to it during the worst moments of my long life. And I’m glad I did, because now I’ve seen within it. Because I _know_ that Rachel can hurt them the way that I can’t. But oh — _how I wish I could!_ ”

In that moment, in the rage of her voice, she sounded nothing like a Chee. The murder in her voice was potent. Even Erek looked disturbed, his mouth opening and closing, unsure of how to respond.

_< Wait him out_,> Jeanne said. _< Don’t say a word.>_

So I stood there, arms crossed, as we hit the two-hour limit.

Suddenly, Erek extended his arm. “Give it to me.”

“What?”

“That thing you’ve been jangling in your pocket — hand it over.”

I withdrew the Minotaur’s claw and gave it to him. Erek examined it, running a metallic finger over the blade.

“This will do,” he said, and then he extended one arm, bending it awkwardly. To my horror, I saw him twist and pull something out of himself.

“What are you doing?!”

“The Pemalites built us with a few spare parts,” Erek said. “This is the equivalent of an extra tibia. I haven’t needed it for several thousand years, and I don’t expect to need it for the next thousand.” He held the claw next to the tibia, studying them both. Then lasers shot out of his eyes and began melting the end of the rod. I watched, fascinated, as the metal turned red, and then white. The lasers stopped, and he used another mechanical extension to craft the rod, looping the molten metal into delicate curlicue hooks. Another mechanical tool began to shave bone from the end of the claw, creating hundreds of corresponding attachment points. Finally, he slipped the Minotaur claw smoothly into the end of the rod, zapping it one more time with the laser for good measure.

“When this cools, it will be an excellent tool,” he said. “Useful for cutting fabric or skinning an animal. We taught many humans to craft them during your hunter-gatherer days, although no methods were as complex as this, admittedly.” 

He paused.

“I suppose, in someone else’s hands, it might be considered a formidable weapon,” he said casually, and then he extended it to me. I took it from him slowly; I could still feel heat radiating from the base.

I examined it, lifted it — and _slashed_ it through the air in front of me. Strangely, it felt almost natural, like an extension of my arm.

“Thank you,” I said.

He shrugged. “It’s not much. It won’t be useful unless you’re in close combat. You can’t exactly deflect a Dracon beam with that thing.”

“It’s better than nothing,” I said, lowering it to my side. “A _lot_ better than nothing.”

Behind me, I heard the door to the _Rachel_ hiss as it opened.

I took a step toward it and paused, because there was one reason I _did_ have to stay. I started to walk toward the medical bay, then shook my head. If I went in there now, I would never leave.

“Take care of Tobias,” I said to Erek. “If I don’t come back — if none of us come back — one hour, Erek. Don’t wait. If you see a chance to get out — don’t miss it. Get him back to Earth. Find his mother. Bring him to his meadow. Even if he never — “

My voice cracked from emotion. I cleared my throat to try again. “Even if he never remembers me — make sure he has a nice meadow, okay? Lots of mice. He deserves to be free. If we fail, maybe Crayak won’t destroy everything right away. Maybe he’ll have a little time before the end. Promise me, Erek.”

He nodded. “I can promise that. He will be free. He will be safe. Good luck, Rachel.”

We shook hands solemnly. I turned to Lourdes, who looked strangely filled with pride.

“Give them hell,” she rasped.

And then I stepped onto Crayak’s ship, following the path of the Animorphs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And... Rachel has entered Crayak's ship.
> 
> I hope no one feels the last two chapters were a bait-and-switch -- the way I saw it, there was no way Jake was going to let her come with them, but there was also no way Rachel was going to go quietly back to Earth if her friends didn't return. Unstoppable force meets immovable object.
> 
> Next chapter to be released Sunday, Dec. 30, 9 p.m. ET.


	49. Inside

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rachel makes a discovery within Crayak's ship.

**** As soon as I stepped off the _Rachel_ , I felt Crayak’s ship _thrum_ around me. I leaned onto my haunches, scanning around me, wielding the Minotaur claw.

_Is it just me, or does it feel like we’re being watched?_

< _Not just you, >_ Jeanne said.

I remained highly alert, but nothing moved around me. I decided it was just an old-fashioned case of _the creeps_ , and started moving forward.

I moved as fast as I could. If I wasn’t back in an hour, Erek was going to leave for Earth, and I was going to be stuck a very long way from home with a whole lot of angry space aliens.

I hurtled down the dark corridor, following the same pipes they had followed. A string of small, flickering red lights illuminated just enough for me to follow along. The place thrummed; occasionally I heard liquid moving through pipes, and more than a few times, a strange _woosh_ of air would blow past me, throwing my hair past my shoulders in front of me.

The deeper I went, the smaller I felt. Unpleasantly, I was reminded of the time sixty-five—million years ago when Tobias and I were eaten by a kronosaurus.

“I’ll tear my way out of this one too, if I have to…” I grumbled.

Inside my head, Jeanne was giving me tactical suggestions of what to do.

_< Map your surroundings — check every door,> _she said. _< If you need to come back this way quickly, you’ll need to know what’s waiting behind them.>_

I was clearly in a utilitarian part of the ship; the few doors I passed led to rooms filled with oily, churning machinery that gave off a sickening stench. I couldn’t make sense of any of it, so I proceeded cautiously. It was getting brighter as I went along, and up ahead, I could see a corridor that was much better lit.

_< Proceed cautiously; if the Animorphs have been discovered, it is possible their guard is up,> _Jeanne said. _< Keep that claw ready.>_

My utility corridor bled into something larger, merging slowly alongside until becoming part of it. I leaned against the last divider, cautiously looking behind me. The passage continued another sixty feet before cutting abruptly to the right, but I saw and heard no one.

_< This construction is interesting,> _Jeanne said. _< The way the passages bleed in and out of each other — it almost reminds me of a circulatory structure.>_

_Like blood running through veins?_ I asked.

_< Oui. Exactly like that.>_

I shivered. One of my more bizarre memories had involved me literally swimming around in Marco’s capillaries, and it was not an experience I was eager to repeat even in a metaphorical sense.

I continued to follow the corridor in the direction I knew the Animorphs had taken. Two twists and turns later, I passed another door, one that looked considerably more well-used than the ones I had peeped into previously.

I raised the claw and depressed a panel on its front surface. It was made of a strange material, pale to look at and clammy to the touch. Creepily, it reminded me of flesh. Some mechanism inside of it clicked, lifted, and the entire thing slid into the wall. I peered in, and I nearly yelped in surprise.

_Clothes!_

The room was _filled_ with red and black uniforms, of every shape and size, hanging on racks against the walls.

“Now _this_ is more like it,” I murmured, starting to peruse through them. “Oh, this would be _way_ too tight — I wonder if they have a size smaller with the sleeves, I’m not digging the monk look…”

_< Rachel, what are you doing?>_

_Finding a fashionable disguise,_ I said curtly. _I’ll be damned if I’m going to die wearing a plain white t-shirt and khaki shorts._

*

I couldn’t find a mirror, but I was sort of able to get a sense of my reflection from the metal door. It had been tricky to assemble the disguise, since I’d never seen it worn before. Still, it wasn’t that complicated, and as luck would have it, it involved a head covering that concealed a significant chunk of my face. The only part of it I was unsure of was some kind of black sash — I was guessing it hung from right to left, but there was no way to know for certain until I met a living person. I was able to weave the claw within the folds of the robe, taking a few minutes to practice withdrawing it until I could wield it almost instantly. 

I looked good, and I was _dangerous._ Finally, I felt like myself.

I continued for another ten minutes, hurrying as quickly as I could, before I came to a sharp fork. I remembered what Marco had said, that they had taken a left turn instead of a right. I hurried down the correct path.

_< You may want to slow down,> _Jeanne said. _< This is where they saw the Gedd.>_

I slowed down, but I still saw and heard nothing. The tunnel was widening, however, and other doors were becoming more frequent. These ones had little windows in them, and when I peered through, I saw two bunk beds, simple and militaristic, against the walls. No one was in them.

_Where is everyone?_ I asked Jeanne.

_< I would guess they’ve been fully mobilized,> _she said. _< They will all be gathered in one place.>_

_For a strike? They don’t need to attack the Ellimist, do they? They have The One on Ket to do that for them._

_< Pomp and circumstance,>_ Jeanne said. _< Crayak will want all his armies assembled — to gloat.>_

This made sense to me, and I moved a little slower because of it. If I was about to stumble across all of Crayak’s forces in one go, I didn’t want to just pop out into it.

I came to another sharp turn, proceeding cautiously to the left. I gasped when I turned the corner.

Something terrible had happened in this hallway. The walls were splattered with blood, and there were several dead Gedds strewn down the hall, in various states of dismemberment. I examined the scene, desperately trying to see if any of my friends were caught up in the mess; to my relief, I only saw aliens.

But — as I went by, I saw clumps of wolf hair, a tiger’s tooth. _They had been here_.

_Do you think they’ve been caught?_ I asked Jeanne.

_< Possibly not — I would expect some kind of alarm to have been raised, and this is all… quiet,> _Jeanne said. _< If this happened not long ago, it’s possible they killed all the Gedds before word got out.>_

I stepped through the mess, my feet crunching over broken radio parts. So much for sending a message to Erek…

_This was a terrible plan_ , I grumbled.

_< No worse than some of your Earth-bound ones,>_ Jeanne pointed out.

I took a deep breath, and moved forward. I was just going to have to believe that my friends were still alive. And if I could find them — great. If I couldn’t, then it would have to be me who got to that communications room and told the Ellimist to stay far away from Dodge City.

*

It hadn’t gone far before I finally began to hear something.

It was a dull roar, like the sound of an ocean in the distance. As I got closer, I began to discern individual voices, all chattering, yelling and oddly chirping over each other. I wasn’t far from a crowd — and a _large_ one, at that.

I came to a large red door that was clearly the portal to something significant. It had no windows, but I could tell that the sounds of the enormous crowd were coming from directly behind it.

_All set?_ I asked Jeanne. I had one had slipped under my uniform, clutching the minotaur claw.

_< Let’s do it,>_ she said.

I smiled.

“Yeah. Let’s do it,” I said, and pulled open the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year, ya'll! I've got less than a month left on this story. Thanks for sticking around.
> 
> (On a side note, this tale hit 1776 hits today -- cue up the Star-Spangled Banner plz)
> 
> Next Chapter to be released Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2019, 9 p.m. ET.


	50. The Trap

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rachel hides herself from Crayak's horde.

**** In front of me, I saw the enormous cathedral-like space the Animorphs had described. A vast room, with a high ceiling I couldn’t see the top of, arced over me, supported by enormous pillars stretching the entirety of the structure. I recognized it— this was where Lourdes had been forced to replay her memories of the Pemalite genocide.

The room was filled with hundreds, maybe thousands — of aliens. I saw humans, Hork-Bajir, Gedds, Taxxons, and dozens of other races I didn’t know. They were milling around in disorganized fashion, and the ones capable of wearing garments were wearing similar uniforms to the one I wore.

I didn’t have it quite right; the sash was supposed to hang more loosely, and the pants rode up higher. I adjusted, and then slipped into the crowd, allowing my grip on the claw to relax. No one seemed to notice me at all.

_What are they doing here?_ I wondered. Everyone seemed chatty, even exuberant. No one seemed to be paying attention to anything in particular. It had the feel of a baseball stadium before a game.

I scanned the entire room, pausing when I reached the other side of the hall. It was raised, about ten feet high, and it had hundreds of strange items laid out: battle armor, weapons. Interwoven, I realized, were things more macabre: corpses that had undergone taxidermy. I spotted a Kelbrid, frozen and beautiful, nearly a fifteen-foot wingspan. Next to it, something else I didn’t recognize: a creature with long, curling limbs. And beside that, an honest-to-God _Pemalite_ , its face formed to be frozen in terror.

Startled, I suddenly realized what it was: an enormous trophy case, wrapping around half the room and stretching up to the ceiling. It was a monument to Crayak’s grisly spree, literally containing all that remained of his enemies. This is the fate that awaited those who resisted.

In the middle of it, I saw the Blade Ship resting on a pedestal.

It was clearly on display, and it gleamed in the light. I saw no sign of where Jake and the others had rammed it with the _Rachel_ , so it must have been repaired. It was prominent, and why wouldn’t it be? The Blade Ship had been Visser Three’s personal spacecraft, fierce and deadly. It had likely been an enormous, if largely symbolic, victory by Crayak to acquire it. It looked sharp, but _would it fly?_ I marked it in my head as a potential escape route.

I scanned the crowd for any sign of the Animorphs. But I saw nothing, and no one looked concerned. Clearly, no one had been in the corridor full of bodies recently.

_< Move around,> _Jeanne said. _< Look like you’re headed somewhere. You need information, and you don’t want anyone talking to you.>_

I did as she said, skirting slowly through the crowd and avoiding eye contact. I was halfway through the crowd when a booming voice filled the room in a language I didn’t understand.

I snapped to attention, following the sound to its source. I saw the Drode standing behind a sort of podium on a platform near the front of the room, his voice magnified by a small black apparatus that must have been functioning as a microphone.

The first thing I noticed was that the Drode was not a hologram. He was noticeably smaller than he had always appeared to be, and the colors around his eyes and mouth were less pronounced. The proportions of his head were different as well, and the overall effect made him look _much_ less scary and _much_ more comical. I remembered our last interaction, stifling in a laugh. At the end of the day, The Drode wasn’t much different than a vain teenage girl, propping himself up with makeup and pretty clothes.

His words continued to boom out, even though he wasn’t speaking anymore. Suddenly I heard: “Fellows! Our time has come!” In crystal-clear English. The microphone was more than a microphone; it was also a translator.

It occurred to me that the Drode might not even speak my language. It was likely that every time we had encountered him before, he had appeared in as a hologram. That would explain how he had been able to dart across time and space, to the bottom of the ocean and throughout alternate timelines.

Inside my uniform, I toyed with the minotaur claw. Since I was with the Drode in physical form now, maybe I would get the chance to use it…

“We have followed our master for years, never questioning, never assuming, never doubting!” The Drode crowed, his words reaching me in strange, babbling echoes. “Our efforts are rewarded! Our gifts are nearly at hand! The Ellimist _approaches_!”

The horde around me physically _shook_ with guttural roars, sending chills down my spine. They all moved with distinct patterns, beating their chests and throwing their heads back. I mimicked it as best I could, reminded suddenly of the scene from _1984_ where everyone screams and chants party slogans.

_I’m getting some serious Nazi vibes from these guys_ , I said to Jeanne.

_< Yes — this is extremely unsettling,> _Jeanne said. _< They are exhibiting classic cultish behavior.>_

_They’ve been brainwashed?_

_< It would seem that way. How did Crayak amass this army? Abductions, force of will?>_

I thought about that for a minute, and then the answer came to me. Crayak had pursued me across the universe, had tempted me with my greatest wish: the destruction of the Yeerks and a chance to fight alongside him for the rest of eternity.

_I don’t think that most of them were kidnapped_ , I said. _They were fierce — they were brave. But they had a talent for killing, and he played into that. And they weren’t smart enough to see what he was doing._

Oh yes, I knew why these thousands of aliens had given up their homes, their families and their chance at normal lives. I knew, because I had been an efficient killing machine like them. The war fueled me, and brought me further and further down a horrifying path. Now I knew where that path led: it led _here_.

_I’m surrounded by pre-dead Rachels,_ I thought. The idea was terrifying.

“Before _our enemy_ arrives — let us see the trap we have set!” The Drode crowed. He lifted an arm, hilariously stubby in real life, and waved it dramatically. Behind us, the wall flickered, revealing itself to be a gigantic screen, the same one they had used to view Lourdes’s memories. Now it seemed to be showing a live view of the vast expanse of Ket. I could see the arch of the horizon as it spread out into wasteland, dotted solely by the Equatorial High Crystal, with the tiny tuft of jungle I had desperately wandered through on the southern side.

The Super Howlers were arranged carefully in the skies around it. From this angle, their formation was clearly deliberate, organized into a star-shaped pattern, with the Equatorial High Crystal exactly in the center.

Near the surface, I saw bright flashes of light — the Kelbrids were bombing the warehouse! They were coming in like tiny darts, swooping and dropping payloads on the mountain ranges, fire and dark smoke rising from them.

The Howler ships did not react to them; they seemed to be hovering almost lazily in position around the crystal. That made me uneasy.

“Watch, now!” The Drode screamed, his voice filled with exhilaration. “Watch — and see what we have wrought!”

On the screen, the Howler ships suddenly shifted. Panels on the tops of them slid open, revealing their bulging, monstrous forms. The view changed to a close-up of one of them, revealing startlingly beautiful robins-egg-blue eyes. There were several Howlers on each ship, and I watched them all lower claws onto the tops of their vessels, grabbing on the way a Ketran might have hooked into a crystal long, long ago.

And then they began to howl.

*

Even though the sound came through into our chamber, impossibly loud, something in the speakers must have been diluting it. I remembered bloody ears and agonizing pain when I heard it for the first time on Iskoort, but that didn’t happen here. Instead, the hordes around me seemed motivated into a state of ecstasy, screaming and throwing their arms to the service, joining the howls with their own savage screams. They were like a demonic pack of wolves yowling in the night.

The effect on Ket was considerably more frightening. The Kelbrid ships jerked uncontrollably, struggling to stay aloft as the howls tore through them. I watched one try vainly to escape, then finally drop from the sky and explode in a pillar of fire on the surface of the wasteland.

The crystal responded as well — it glowed a light purple, and then shifted to a deep blue, and then became a dark, blood-red color. I remembered how the crystal had reacted to my touch, how it had lit up to draw Cassie and Erek when I was stranded on the cliff’s edge. Somehow, Crayak had hacked that connection from my mind as well.

_What is it doing?!_ I asked.

_< The warehouse!> _Jeanne said. _< Look!>_

The mountain range where The One lay dormant was undulating. Creeping out from the hangar door, easily pushing through the detritus of the doomed Kelbrid attack, was an enormous black tendril, lurching, pointing, searching.

“We will CONSUME HIM!” The Drode shrieked, and I thought the crowd was about to drop dead from excitement, from the way they shook and spun.

_Okay, I’ve had enough,_ I said to Jeanne. _If the Ellimist is on his way, it means we’re nearly out of time._

_< Agreed. We can’t be far from the communications center at this point. Circle to the back of the crowd — it should be on that side.>_

I did as she said, keeping my head down. On the screen, I saw the remaining Kelbrid ships fleeing, and The One’s dark form retreating back into the warehouse. Their little demonstration had accomplished its purpose; troop morale was way up, and their enemies had been rebuffed.

Only the Animorphs could stop them now, and if they were dead, it was up to me.

The back of the room sloped upward, which gave me a better view of the room. I was unsure where to go from here, so I paused to do a quick sweep of it, hoping that it would give me a clue where to go.

And that’s when I saw one of the figures looking noticeably different than the rest of the crowd. At first, I didn’t know why they caught my eye. They were human, and acting much less enthusiastic than anyone around them. They wore the uniform, but the sash was dangling from the wrong angle. And there was something about the way they moved — the height, and the flash of long blonde hair peeping out from under their head covering.

They turned, allowing me to catch a glimpse of their face, and my heart stopped.

_It was me._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm super pumped to bring you this chapter, the first of a new year, and one that marks 100 continuous days of publishing this story, and I'm proud of myself for getting this far. This was a challenge to myself to see if I could develop a consistent writing habit, and the answer appears to be... yes!
> 
> But I've still got to finish the work before I get too far ahead of myself. Only a few chapters to go now. It's looking like I will go a few chapters past 60, which I'd been hoping to avoid, but - oh well. Considering this is a first draft with relatively light editing, I should be glad I haven't massively overwritten things.
> 
> The end is coming. Thanks for sticking with Rachel on this one.
> 
> Next chapter coming out Thursday, Jan. 3, 2019 at 9 p.m. ET.


	51. The Other Rachel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rachel confronts her greatest enemy: herself.

**** I surged forward, ignoring Jeanne’s outburst in my head.

_< Where are you going? What’s happening?>_

_It’s me!_ I said. _That woman — she’s got my hair, my eyes —_

_< That’s not possible!>_

_Why not? What if Crayak has a bunch of Rachel clones running around?!_ I was having a tough time pushing through the crowd. At one point, I had to duck to avoid a Hork Bajir’s blade.

_< Because it isn’t easy to make even a single clone! Why do you think they based the operation on Ket? They were harvesting energy from the core.>_

_I don’t know — maybe they made another one and sent her up here?_

_< If that was true, why would they have tried to implant the _ixcila _in me? > _Jeanne said coldly. _< The reason I know there weren’t any other clones is because they were forced to make you because I died!>_

Oh. Right.

_That_ is _me,_ I told her. And Other Rachel was apparently headed _straight_ toward the Drode, moving slowly through the crowds. Occasionally, she would duck down, and I would lose her, before seeing that shock of blonde hair again.

_< Be careful, it could be a trick — >_

_How would it be a trick? They don’t know we’re here! This is something else._

I was losing ground — the crowd was getting thicker and more diverse. It was impossible to dart quickly between the blades. I longed for the agility of a house cat — Fluffer McKitty could have zipped right through this mess.

_What was she doing?_ She was nearly at the Drode, who was still roaring platitudes over the microphone — “ _CRAYAK IS ALL! OUR MASTER, THE DIVINE!” —_ that kind of crap.

Suddenly, in front of her — a bloody disaster. A Taxxon stepped the wrong way and was sliced by the blade of a Hork Bajir. A dozen of his brethren were on him in an instant, another cannibalistic attempt to satiate the ceaseless hunger. Other Rachel backpedaled as the aliens surged around her, desperately evading them. She barely escaped the feeding frenzy, but she didn’t get away from me.

“Hey,” I said quietly. She spun around and I pulled her in close so she could feel the minotaur claw against her stomach. “One sound, one scream — I’ll slice and the Taxxons will be on you.”

She was, without question, _me._ Except that she had messy bangs, and the sides of her uniform were wrinkly — good lord, was one of her pant legs really tucked _into her sock?!_

And that’s when I figured it out.

_“Cassie?”_ I whispered.

She nodded, and I lowered the claw.

_Oh my God,_ I mouthed, and then I motioned for her to follow me out of the crowd, where we could talk.

*

We made our way through the crowd, into another empty corridor. No one seemed to notice us.

“What the _hell_ are you doing?!” I demanded.

“Pretending to be you!” She said.

“Well I can — see — that!” I said as I savagely rearranged her hair into something presentable. “But why?!”

“Jake said you couldn’t come because you were willing to give yourself up to Crayak,” she said. “And I still had your DNA from when you were constantly about to poop out an alligator!”

“It was a crocodile!” I snapped. “You were going to — what, go to Crayak and pretend to be me?”

“I didn’t know what else to do!” she said, twirling her — _my_ hair — nervously. “The mission went wrong. I don’t know where the others are, if they’ve found the comms tower, or — “

“How long have you been in morph?” I asked.

“I’m not sure. I think — “

“Morph out! Morph out!”

For a terrifying ten seconds, I thought that Cassie might be trapped as a Rachel forever. Not that would, like, be the _worst_ fate for anybody, but for her sake, I was relieved to see her skin darken and my hair retract backward into her scalp.

“Okay,” I said, when she was fully Cassie again. “Tell me what happened.”

*

Cassie and the others ran into a party of Gedds, of which Jeanne and I had seen the grisly remains. If it had been _just_ the Gedds, they probably would have been okay, except halfway through, they were attacked by some kind of species Cassie had never seen before, with long, spindly limbs and some kind of laser-shooting eyes. Cassie had been injured in the melee (this explained the large amount of wolf fur matted against the walls), and Jake ordered her to retreat and demorph. By the time she was able to return, everyone was gone.

“I didn’t know what else to do,” she said. “When I saw the Drode up there, I thought — I thought I could use him to find Crayak.”

“That is _insane_ ,” I said. “You realize how insane that is?”

“It’s what _you_ were planning to do!”

“Yes, but I’m insane,” I countered. I exhaled, slowly, rubbing my head.

As crazy as Cassie’s plan was, I had to admit, it had taken courage to embark on it. If she wanted to have any chance at success, she likely wouldn’t have been able to morph out, remaining a Rachel _nothlit_ for the rest of what was likely to be a horrifying life, all for a bleak chance at scaring the Ellimist away from Ket.

_The others wouldn’t have given up either,_ I realized. Separated, they would have continued to the bitter end. I was still fairly certain they hadn’t been caught, so they must have been able to dispatch Laser Eyes before he could warn everyone else.

That meant they were still headed for the communications tower, and it was where we should be heading too.

“Cassie, I love you,” I said, setting a hand on her shoulder. “And what you did — it took real bravery. But it wasn’t the right move. Going to Crayak — that’s a last resort. That’s an _all-hope-is-lost_ moment. And we’re not there yet.”

She blinked. “We’re not?”

“Not even close — look, Jeanne has a pretty good sense of where the communications arrays will be. That’s where Jake and the rest will be headed. If we find them there, great, we can login to AIM and tell the Ellimist to stay put. If we don’t find them, we’ll figure out a way to warn the Ellimist ourselves.”

She nodded. “Right. Yeah, you’re right.” She started to stride toward the atrium, but I stopped her.

“I’m sorry, but — _I need to fix your outfit,_ ” I said.

*

We made our way around the fringes of Crayak’s horde, remaining unnoticed. The Drode was still doing his chants, clearly living it up as the repugnant little dictator he was. We ignored his ranting, quickly scooting to the door that Jeanne had suggested I go through before.

_< If the Kelbrid schematics were right, we should be very close,> _Jeanne said.

Behind the door was another hallway, this one well-lit and clearly heavily used. No one was in it now, however, so Cassie and I hurried down it. I kept darting my eyes back and forth, hoping to spot a housefly, or a cockroach — but so far, nothing.

We came to a doorway at the end of the hallway, and I pressed the flesh-colored panel, expecting it to open, as all the other ones had. But instead, this one beeped at me, and glowed red.

“It’s locked,” I muttered, looking from side to side. “But I don’t see any keyhole — how does this thing open?”

Suddenly, from behind us, I heard a sound. I swiveled, minotaur claw at the ready.

A skunk was staring at us, beady-eyed and bushy tailed.

<Ladeez,> Marco said. <Permit me to introduce myself. I am Pepe Le Pew, your _lover_. >

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I REALLY enjoyed ya'll's responses to the last chapter! It might sound weird to say that I was pleased so many people guessed the cliffhanger, but I'm trying really hard to not pull any narrative tricks with this story, so I expected this one to be predictable. 
> 
> This chapter is a slight nod to Book 32, which I absolutely hated as a kid. I remember finding it nearly unreadable, and having no idea what happened in it, and moving on. Reading it years later, though, in the full context of the series, it has a much darker tone. Rachel essentially gets a glimpse at the monster she is becoming, but at the end of the day, she embraces her dark side. Most of the Animorphs books have a little hope in them, but that one doesn't.
> 
> Writing is going great, I'm managing about 1,000 words a day now. I love the discussion happening on these chapters. Ya'll are making this worthwhile.
> 
> Next chapter to be released Saturday, Jan. 5, 9 p.m. ET.


	52. The Crystal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An unexpected discovery could change everything.

“Marco, what are you doing?”

The skunk blinked, waddling its little hindquarters. <Waiting for you two, obviously.>

“Where’s Jake and Ax?” Cassie asked.

<Back the way you came — they were trying to find something to open this door with. We figured you’d show up eventually, Cassie. And to be honest, I’m not all that surprised to see you, Rachel. I knew you wouldn’t let me die before confessing your boundless love for me.>

“You’re ridiculous,” I said, shaking my head. Next to me, Cassie exhaled a sigh of relief.

“How did you escape from that… thing?”

<Oh, old x-man cyclops wasn’t so bad once we got him into a bigger space. Jake lured him, and I blinded him with a gorilla punch. Ax did the rest with his tail. I’d say I was going to have nightmares about it for the rest of my life, but since our painful deaths are probably not far off, at least I don’t have to worry about that.>

“Maybe not,” I pointed out. “Erek let me go — he and Lourdes are still hidden, and they agreed to wait a little longer.”

<Well, that’s the first good news I’ve heard all day!> Marco said, wiggling his little butt in a comically happy dance.

“Why a skunk?” I asked.

<I was kind of hoping one of Crayak’s minions would would walk by and just open the door for me,> Marco said. <A gorilla was too obvious, but something as small as a housefly wouldn’t be useful. A skunk, on the other hand, knows how to hide, but can pack a punch if it needs to.>

_< How is this man so good at strategizing?> _Jeanne asked. _< It is infuriating how simultaneously stupid and intelligent he is.>_

_Oh, I. Feel. You,_ I said.

*

We didn’t have to wait long for Ax and Jake. They announced their appearance as two chittering squirrels zipping across the floor. They stopped completely when they saw Cassie and me.

<You aren’t supposed to be here!> Jake said to me.

“I know, I know,” I said dryly. “It took some convincing, but I got Erek to let me go.”

He started to make a remark about Erek, but it vanished as he demorphed.

“So I take it you two didn’t have any luck?” Marco asked.

<I had hoped to find some kind of beam weapon to incinerate the door,> Ax said. <Regrettably, none of them appear to be armed with beam weapons.>

“Of course not,” Cassie said. “Give weapons to _that_ group? They’d probably shoot each other in a day. They’re dangerous enough without guns.”

“So how do we get this open?” I said, kicking the door.

<I believe we located the bridge,> Ax said. <It is not guarded, but heavily occupied. We did not go far into it. However, the control center of the ship is likely located there.>

“What are we going to do with that info? ‘ _Ram the planet’?”_ Cassie shot a look at Jake. “Because that worked _so_ well last time? _”_ Jake shrugged, sheepishly.

<Prince Jake, I must point out that we are not in a defensive position,> Ax cut in. <Anyone who comes this way would find us.>

“Right,” Jake said. “Marco, go gorilla. Try tearing off the door again.”

“Fine,” Marco said, his arms beginning to change. “Not gonna work, though. This puppy is solid. We might as well go back with Erek.”

“What’s that, now?” Jake asked.

“I said — “ But his words were lost.

“Erek is staying longer,” I said. “They haven’t been discovered. I asked him to wait, and he agreed.”

<How much longer will the Chee be remaining?> Ax asked.

“Maybe another twenty minutes?” I was guessing, I had no idea how long I had been moving through the ship. “Whatever we do, we have to move fast.”

“Maybe we could have Erek rip the door off,” Jake said. “Do you think that would go against his programming? Maybe now that the entire universe at stake, they’d be willing to help us.”

<Would the Chee be amenable to altering their programming?> Ax asked.

“For once — probably,” I said. “I don’t know how Erek feels, but Lourdes is holding a grudge.”

“Why are you asking?” Marco asked, looking intently at Ax. “The Chee can’t alter their programming on the fly. It’s not a switch they can flip on and off. Erek only did the one time because — ”

<Prince Jake,> Ax interrupted. <I did not bring this up when we were squirrels, because I thought the information was no longer of value.

<When we were hiding among Crayak’s trophies, I noticed that the Pemalite corpse has a medallion around its neck. A Pemalite Crystal appears to be embedded within it. Without an appropriate energy reader, I cannot guarantee that it would allow the Chee to alter their programming — visually, however, it looks identical to the item we retrieved from the Matcom Corporation.>

And just like that, we had a new plan.

*

<Marco, morph something small, maybe cockroach,> Jake said. He was halfway to peregrine falcon. <Rachel, Cassie — both of you have disguises. Marco’s will need to hide on one of you. Ax-man, go harrier. You and I are going to fly up and get that crystal. You said it’s around the Pemalite’s neck?>

<Yes,> Ax said, as wings sprouted from his back. <It was impossible to tell what material the medallion was made of. It may require two of us to lift it.>

<Okay,> Jake said. <I’ll try to grab it like a french fry, and you be there if I need an extra set of talons. Then we haul butt back to the _Rachel_ , and we ask Erek and Lourdes very nicely if they want to help us open that door, or kick some alien butt.>

“Lourdes will,” I insisted.

“Hey Jake — you sure you want me to go cockroach?” Marco asked. A devilish grin was spreading across his face.

“Why?” Jake said. “What are you thinking?”

*

We were in position. Jake and Ax had slipped into the back of the atrium in bird morphs, and they were slowly gliding up to the ceiling. They had to move carefully so no one saw them, and were creeping up behind the largest of the pillars behind us. Cassie next to me, breathing nervously.

I held a skunk beneath my sash.

<For what it’s worth, the skunk mind does _not_ like this, > Marco said. <A moving, human-scented burrow is definitely not on its list of must-haves when choosing a house.>

“I swear to God, if you lose control of the skunk brain and spray me, I’ll wring your little neck,” I whispered furiously. “I don’t care if it does mean the end of the universe!”

<Relax, relax. I’ve got Mr. Le Pew under control.>

“It’s a lady skunk,” Cassie whispered. “You know that!”

Marco’s contribution to the plan, idiotic on the surface, made sense. Cassie and I would move slowly to the area nearest the trophy case, carrying Marco, while Ax and Jake would position themselves in such a way that they could quickly grasp the crystal. When Jake gave the signal, Marco would let loose the biggest stink he could, and then we’d grab him and get as far away as we could. We were hoping the smell would cause so much chaos (despite the large room it _was_ still a closed space) that it would distract the crowds from noticing two birds of prey.

We inched around the crowd, who were still clearly buying into the Drode’s speech, or sermon, or whatever it was. The enormous view screen was still plastered with the Ketran horizon, the Howler ships hovering at the edges in their star formation. Symbols blinked rapidly near the lower half of it. I thought at first they were random, but after a few seconds, I saw them switch to a different readout. They seemed to be changing frequently, and blinking almost like a timer.

Unless…

I kept my eyes glued on it as we moved. If it was like the Drode’s translator microphone, eventually it should appear in some language that I could understand.

<Oh, this skunk brain is _not_ happy,> Marco said. <My butt is primed for stink. Ya’ll ladies better be ready to run, because we’re reaching plague status.>

The symbols blinked into numerals I could read, and my stomach dropped.

“Now!” I hissed. “Marco — tell Jake and Ax they need to move RIGHT NOW!”

“Not yet,” Cassie said. “We’re too far inside, we could cause a stampede — “

“That thing on the screen — it’s a timer counting down until the Ellimist arrives,” I whispered frantically. “And it’s low — it’s way way _way_ too low!”

<Jake, Xena’s telling me we got us an Ellimist inbound,> Marco said. <How much time, Princess?>

“None!” I was panicking. The last time I could read had indicated seconds, not minutes. “Now! Now! It has to be NOW!”

A piercing, impossibly bright light appeared in the center of the view screen. The horde of aliens around us swirled back from the Drode to take it in, their shrieks and moans abruptly silenced by their awe. On the screen, something _enormous_ appeared — a wave of light blue tendrils, emerging from nothing. It was incredible — it seemed to somehow be opening the air itself. Behind it, I could actually _see_ the white marshmallow foam of Z-Space — that’s why it glowed so brightly.

The portal widened and grew taller. The blue tendrils shifted, plucked at the edges and then became part of them. Intricate lines danced around the edges  — patterns, threads, undulating and weaving into a thing of beauty, like nothing I had ever seen.

A familiar old man emerged from the center of it. He was as tall as a skyscraper, and his long hair trailed behind him. He wore a voluminous blue robe, the same color as the tendrils that had opened the portal. He gazed across the Ketran horizon, and his face was so large that we could clearly see his expression.

The Ellimist focused his gaze on the Equatorial High Crystal. Ancient eyes filled with tears, and I saw his chest fall with an enormous sigh that might have caused a windstorm. He lifted an arm slowly, reaching out toward his former home. 

Around us, all was completely, totally silent. Crayak’s armies were watching in stunned awe, but I broke from their gaze, looking back to the main platform.

The Drode looked euphoric with joy. At his podium, he licked his lips and leaned forward:

“ _Now!_ ” he said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's only getting wilder from here on out, folks. The final act has begun.
> 
> Next chapter coming out Monday, Jan. 7 at 9 p.m. ET.


	53. An all-hope-is-lost moment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rachel makes an impossible decision.

The sounds of the Howlers tore through the Ketran atmosphere. I knew when the Ellimist heard it, he looked like he had been slapped. The portal to Z-Space zipped shut behind, him, crashing into nothing so quickly that you could see the jungle canopy flutter from the missing air. The Ellimist staggered forward, an expression of confusion spreading over his face. And then he turned, and finally saw Crayak’s planet, looming over him like a hungry monster.

The Equatorial High Crystal exploded into life, cycling through all of its colors so rapidly you couldn’t discern one from the next. It locked into a blazing, blood-red color, projecting its glow onto the Ellimist.

And behind him — from a hangar door ground up by failed Kelbrid attacks — the black coil of The One slithered into view.

<NOW, JAKE!> Marco shouted. <IT’S NOW OR NEVER!>

<Okay — Ax, let’s go!> Above us, we saw the two hawks zoom into view.

“We aren’t in position — “ Cassie said.

<THROW ME!> Marco shouted. <JUST CHUCK THE SKUNK!>

I reached over and snatched Marco out of Cassie’s shirt, wound up and threw him underhanded, like I was pitching a softball. He zoomed over the alien horde, his little skunk legs pinwheeling for any traction, _generally_ in the direction he was supposed to be in, while the Ellimist fought for his life on the view screen behind him.

I’ve had some weird times as an Animorph, but this was definitely the strangest.

He landed somewhere in the thick of the crowd, not directly in front of the trophy case but close enough.

“We should not be here!” Cassie said. “Where he’s at — the smell —“

<FIRE IN THE HOLE!> Marco yelled.

*

It took approximately five seconds for the aliens on that side of the room to realize that something had gone terribly wrong. They were suddenly leaping away, yelping and shrieking (and, for the species that had mouths, puking), pressing against the members of their fellow horde. Suddenly, Cassie and I had less than an arms length of room between us and the nearest Taxxon as the crowd surged away from it.

I grabbed her roughly by the shoulder and plowed forward, ignoring the shouts and screaming, desperately pushing to get to the wall before we were crushed. I was successful in getting us out of the worst of it before the smell hit me. It was so rancid that my eyes teared up immediately and began to gag.

“They’re going for it!” Cassie said, through coughs. “Look!”

I turned, and saw a harrier and peregrine falcon dart down from the ceiling. Jake lifted the leather strap of the necklace, tearing into it with talons, while Jake clenched the crystal and pulled against Ax. The strap wasn’t breaking!

I looked around the room, hoping that nobody had noticed the bizarre scene. The horde was pressing away from it, confused and terrified.

Next to me, Cassie suddenly lifted her head.

“It’s the Ellimist!” She screamed. “He’s fighting back! He’s attacking us!”

_< Brilliant!> _Jeanne said. _< They’re scared — use it to your advantage!>_

“We’re all going to DIE!” I screamed, as loud as I could. “The Ellimist is going to kill us!”

It worked — I heard the crowd begin to echo our screams of fear, and they began to push harder against one other in the enclosed space.

I turned back to Ax and Jake — they had severed the strap! Ax was beating his wings — he was airborne!

“ _THE BIRDS!”_ The Drode roared, and I twisted back to the stage. To my horror, I saw that he was pointing directly at Ax and Jake — he was the only one not fooled by our show. _“Those of you with any spine — KILL THE BIRDS!”_

Some of his words vanished in the melee — but those near to him heard them. I saw a menagerie of alien creatures withdraw weapons from their side, and in terror, I saw them all raise them directly at Ax and Jake.

I looked around desperately, terrified — but there was nothing we could do! We were barely staying afloat of the crowd as it was. There had to be something we could do, some distraction —

But then the air filled up with spears, arrows, blow darts and beam weapons, and I saw Ax and Jake spiral out of the air.

*

I lunged toward them desperately — and was nearly decapitated by a Hork Bajir’s arm.

“JAKE!” Cassie yelled, but no one could hear her in the chaos. Aliens were retching from the skunk smell, or running from it. The discharge of various weapons seemed to have added fuel to the frenzy, and more were firing weapons now, in every possible direction.

It was total pandemonium, and for the life of me, I couldn’t see what had become of Ax and Jake. I stared helplessly at the crowd of aliens, then back to the Ellimist. The black tendrils of The One were raising around him, coiling around his neck. He reached up and attempted to pull one away, but his grip faltered! His face filled with confusion and horror — for the first time in millennia, he was limited in power!

The sounds of the Howlers increased, and I saw the Ellimist’s face screw up with pain. The One expanded, its thick cords undulating hungrily as they tightened around his limbs.

And then — at the edge of the view screen — I saw something flicker.

_The Kelbrids!_

Four of their ships swooped low, circling around the Ellimist and firing targeted bursts wherever they good. They struck The One just above the Ellimist’s shoulder, and I saw an enormous burst of blood arch back from it, exploding and sizzling into the Ketran wasteland.

_Yes!_ I thought, sighing in relief. The Ellimist took a step forward. He would escape! He was too powerful to contain, Crayak had been a fool to think he could trap him!

But then he stumbled, and the howling became more acute, and The One surged again. It was too fast for him, I realized. The crystal pulsed, and the Howlers howled. _Destructive interference._ The geon energy radiated by the Ellimist — the source of his powers — was being used against him.

*

I took it all in, and I blinked, and I inhaled. 

_There’s no other way, is there?_ I asked Jeanne.

_< I’m sorry, Rachel,> _she said, sadly. < _I’m here with you. And I’m ready to fight. You aren’t alone this time. >_

That made me feel better — it really did. Sure, I was scared. I was scared the first time I went willingly to my death, and now I was just as scared. But at least this time, I wasn’t alone.

I knew what I had to do.

*

“Where’s Marco?!” Cassie shouted, her shirt over her mouth. “We have to find Marco!”

I looked at her, her face panicked but determined, and I thought about how much I would miss her. How good it had been to see her, again, even if it was for a short time. I thought about how she was the best friend I ever had.

“Cassie,” I pulled her next to me. “You remember what I said? About the _all-hope-is-lost_ moment? That’s now, Cassie. It’s time for me to turn myself in. I’m going to go to Crayak, and I’m going to do whatever I can to keep everyone safe.”

“No!” She said. “Rachel, you can’t — “

“Find Marco, get back to the _Rachel_ , take Tobias and _get out of here!”_ I snapped. And, because I couldn’t leave it like that, I shouted, “I LOVE YOU!”

And then, pushing her backwards, I pulled away into the surge of the crowd. I followed the currents easily, nearly climbing over them. Everyone was trying to move in the same direction — away from the trophies, toward the front of the room, where the Drode was still yelling.

I angled to the right, spotting a low staircase that led to the stage. I dove for it, climbing up.

But when I pulled forward — the Drode was gone! I scanned the crowd, my heart sinking. If the Drode wasn’t here, I didn’t know where to go! I needed him to find Crayak!

There!

He was on some kind of levitating platform, with guiderails, gliding above the crowd. Was he looking for Jake and Ax? No — he was moving off toward some exit, near the roof of the chamber, inaccessible to everyone else.

“HEY!” I yelled. “YO! DRODE!”

But my voice was lost in the mayhem. I stepped forward and grabbed his weird microphone which, up close, looked like a bundle of black slime.

“HEY, MISS CONGENIALITY!” I screamed, and was satisfied to hear my words explode across the chamber, translated rapidly in a dozen alien languages. “It’s me, the Prom Queen. I’m here for my crown!”

The Drode turned, and I was _delighted_ to see an expression of horror on his face.

“I’m ready,” I said, my heart beating so fast I almost thought it would burst out of my chest. “I’m ready to join Crayak.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter to be released Wednesday, Jan. 9 at 9 p.m. ET.


	54. The Tables Turned

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Drode leads Rachel to Crayak.

**** The Drode circled back, zooming in on his weird hovering vehicle.

“Is this a _trick_?” He breathed, coming just out of arms reach from me. “Something from the Ellimist…?”

“No trick,” I said. “I’m right here, _no hologram.”_

He looked at me nervously, his eyes flicking back to the teeming masses beneath us, and back to the Ellimist on the screen. 

“The birds…” he said. “Could they really have… no, no that’s not possible!”

I could practically _see_ wheels in his head turning — but what direction were they leading him toward? What would motivate the Drode now?

“Come on, then,” he snarled, coming close enough where I could leap onto his platform. We sped away smoothly, rising high up into a corner of the room, where we slipped behind a pillar and into a narrow, empty corridor.

I stared at him as we moved along — I was close enough to wring his neck. In person, unlike his holograms, it was small enough that I could have fit both hands around it.

_< Something is wrong,>_ Jeanne said. _< He’s terrified — why is he so scared?>_

_Because he lied to Crayak_ , I said. _Crayak wanted me here, and the Drode got jealous, so he left me on a ledge to die. Crayak isn’t going to be happy with him when he finds out I’m alive._

_< What?!> _Jeanne said, sounding alert. _< Rachel — this is bad!>_

_What? Why?_

_< Because if the Drode can kill you now, Crayak won’t ever know you’ve been here!>_

Uh oh.

Almost as if on cue, the Drode cut the power to the platform, and I hurtled forward — I hadn’t realized how fast he’d been going! I careened over the guardrail, only falling a few feet. Still, I landed on my stomach, scraping my knees and sending a shot of pain through my ribs.

The Drode was climbing out of his vehicle — he was more nimble than I had expected.

“I wish I could say it was a pleasure torturing you again, but I really was hoping you would just _stay dead!_ ”

I pulled myself to my feet, my chest aching from where I had struck my injuries. I reached for the minotaur claw, but he lunged at me, too fast! I swung my arm to the side, catching him awkwardly against the side of his triangle head. The hit was glancing, and he just snarled before wrapping his hands around my neck, his stubby fingers lengthening and snapping around my airway. I felt them loop tightly — I had never known that he had this ability!

“Enough,” he snarled. “I don’t know how you survived — and I don’t know how you freed the other Animorphs — but it doesn’t matter any more! I don’t care! My master is on the verge of victory, and _I will be there by his side_!” The fingers tightened — I couldn’t breathe! My strength was running out of me.

_Jeanne_ … I cried out weakly.

_< I am here!> _she shouted. _< I am with you! Together in Hell, we will get our revenge!>_

The fire in her voice gave me strength — not enough to pry the Drode’s multi-knuckled fingers from my throat, but enough so that I could twist my lips into a maniacal grin. If he was going to kill me, let me die while mocking him for the pathetic worm he was!

The Drode saw my smile, and he screamed like an animal, tightening his grip. Stars were flying in front of my eyes. I was feeling lighter — so light! I was just going to drift away now. A few more seconds of pain, and then I would be gone. No _ixcila_ this time. No third chance. It was okay. It was —

_DRODE!_

Suddenly the Drode’s long fingers were gone, and I was choking air into my lungs as fast I could.

_YOU HAVE BETRAYED ME!_

I lifted my head to see the Drode standing, his back to me. His entire body was frozen in place, his arms extended to either side of him as far as they could. He was emitting a whining sound, the high-pitched keening wail I knew represented sheer terror.

In front of him, I saw an enormous blood-red eye, sitting atop a mountain of skin and muscle, wires crisscrossing throughout it. It was surrounded by roaring dancing flames. 

_YOU WILL NOT HARM HER_ , Crayak said, his voice everywhere and nowhere at once. _YOU WILL BRING HER TO ME… IN THE FLESH._

And then Crayak vanished, and the Drode fell to the floor.

I pulled up slowly, still gasping for error, rubbing my neck.

“Why’d you have to _ruin it?_ ” The Drode moaned, his fearful eyes filled with furious tears. “Why… couldn’t… you… just… die?”

“Because I’m _Rachel_ ,” I said, pushing through the pain lacing through my chest so I could stand up. “And I’m _better than you!”_

“I hate you!” The Drode said. “I hate you!”

“Knock if off and get up, drama queen,” I said, walking over to him. “You heard the big man: I’ve got a date with Crayak, and I think you better take me to him now. He wouldn’t like it if you drag your feet.”

He got to his feet, glaring at me like a sullen child. I smiled at him, as nicely as I could.

“Lead the way,” I said.

We began to walk, a bizarre pair. He continued to mumble under his breath — obscenities, some in English some in other languages. I ignored it, but then he called me something that _no one calls me_.

So I took a longer step, pivoted in front of the Drode and pulled the minotaur claw from under my shirt and shoved it right under his jaw, and my other hand around the back of his neck.

“You know,” I whispered, spreading that insane grin across my face again. “Someone once told me, ‘ _Your true nature_ always _emerges.’_ Oh!” I giggled. “It was _you._ ”

I recognized the look on his face: frozen in fear, unable to breathe, eyes wide and accepting.

“Guess what? My true nature is _back_ ,” I hissed at him. “And she’s mad. And unless you stop acting like a spoiled brat, she’s going to gut you right here. And you know what? _I don’t think Crayak will mind one bit_!”

I held him like that for a few seconds, breathing directly into his face, relishing the terror in his eyes.

And then I let him go. I dropped the minotaur claw to my side, and took a step backward.

“I just wanted you to know what it feels like,” I whispered. “I wanted you to know what it feels like _to be prey.”_

And then I began to walk in the direction he had been leading me, immensely satisfied by the sound of his soft sobs as he followed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope this chapter is as satisfying to read as it was to write it. I dreamed up this scene very early in the process, and it was a blast to finally reach it.
> 
> This story is nearly complete, by the way. I don't quite yet have a final chapter count... but I expect to in the next few days.
> 
> I hope you'll stick with me to the end.
> 
> Next chapter to be released Friday, Jan. 11, at 9 p.m. ET.


	55. Crayak

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rachel and Crayak meet eye to eyes.

**** The Drode led me a distance down the passageway, until we came to an enormous steel tube. He stepped inside, glared at me, and jerked his head backward, indicating I should join him. I went inside, and then, abruptly, we were rising upward. We were in a sort of elevator — I could feel the floor thrumming as we rose.

Neither of us said a word. We just glared at each other as fiercely as we could. I let my minotaur claw dangle openly between us — the very tip of it dripped with the Drode’s blood. I had just barely broken the skin.

Our trip only lasted minutes, but it felt as though it could have lasted hours. The whole time, I knew the Ellimist was struggling to survive his ordeal. How much time could the Kelbrids buy him?. Any second now, the Ellimist could become part of The One, putting him firmly under Crayak’s control. Whatever else happened, I _had_ to stop that.

_How do you deal with overwhelming odds?_ I asked Jeanne. _Our enemy could be the size of Mount Everest, for example. How does one attack Mount Everest?_

_< Hmm…> _she thought, but then she had an answer. _< You can defeat Mount Everest by chipping away very, very slowly.>_

I understood what she meant. I _could_ defeat Crayak by joining him. But I couldn’t do it today. If I ran in, guns blazing, the way I had always done, I would only get myself (and the rest of the universe) killed. No, I was in it for the long haul. I could be at Crayak’s side for hundreds of years, maybe even thousands. And I would not be able to resist him the entire time. He would play upon my worst impulses, and he would activate them. I would tear across innocent worlds in his name, like the Angel of Death in _Prince of Egypt_ , though no slathered blood would stop me. I would kill for him, over and over, like I had killed for the human race, like I had killed for Jake. Only this time — I couldn’t lose myself in it. _I had to remember who I was._ I was Rachel, and this time, I was determined to stay one of the good guys.

And eventually, Crayak would slip up. He _had_ to. And when he did, I would be ready. Maybe I would be guilty of countless crimes. Maybe the blood of my victims would be enough to form an ocean. But if it was — _I would drown Crayak in it._ Like the Ellimist overtook Father, inch-by-inch, mind-by-mind, so I would consume Crayak.

My last murder would be his.

I whispered these things in my mind, over and over. Jeanne joined in with me, repeating them forcefully, underlining them in bright red through my thoughts.

And then I felt the elevator slow and stop. Some hidden gears locked into place.

_I wish I’d known you,_ I said to Jeanne suddenly. _Back on Earth. If the Yeerks had never come. I wish we’d been friends. I could have learned a lot from you._

_< We would have been good friends!> _Jeanne said. _< You are brave — you fight!>_

_I went too far,_ I said. _I lost myself._ And then, almost ashamed: _I’m scared._

_< You came back,> _Jeanne said fiercely. _< With no one to guide you, you got lost in the darkness. But you clawed your way back. And that isn’t nothing! That matters. You have much to learn, true — but you have already grasped the most important things: A soldier’s strength is not in her brain, nor her teeth, nor her claws, nor her cruelty. It is in her _heart!>

The door slid open, and the Drode stepped into Crayak’s chamber.

_Thanks, Jeanne_ , I said, and then I followed him.

*

We walked into a room that was so large I could not see the ceiling. It simply petered off into impossible, pitch black darkness that wasn’t quite empty. Things glittered in it menacingly; tiny points of orange and yellow light, flickering into existence briefly, and then vanishing.

Below it, an enormous triangular prism of slowly undulating flesh spread out over the floor, cresting into a peak several stories above me. Its curves were broken by cybernetic machinery slotted in and outside its edges. Wires thrummed and sparks snapped throughout hidden conduits. Sometimes whole pieces flickered out of existence, bursting into view nearby. The entire thing was vibrating — I could feel it in my bones, like an impossibly deep bass at a concert. Only this was not designed to impress, but to intimidate. This was Crayak, and as soon as I stepped before him, his message came loud and clear: _You are nothing to me._

The walls rose around us, flesh-colored. I looked for pillars but saw none of them — how could a room this vast support what must be a massive roof? But I suppose on the list of mysteries about Crayak, this one was minor.

_“_ Welcome, Rachel.”

His voice was everywhere at once, inside and outside my head. He had softened it from his rage against the Drode, probably so he didn’t blow my brain up on the spot. I tried to stand up straight, forcing my crazy grin over my face again.

“Hello, Crayak,” I said. “I’m alive. I hear I have you to thank for that?”

Crayak laughed, the mountain of flesh shaking with his chuckle. Above it, the air seemed to _split_ open, revealing his enormous eye with the bloody iris. Veins seemed to bubble away from it, and I was close enough that I could see them pulsing.

“It _was_ a _chore_ ,” Crayak said. “Your body was difficult enough to re-grow, but your mind! It _fought_ me. I knew it would fight. I knew it would kill anything it entered. We had to weaken it, so it would accept the construct.”

_What is he talking about?_

_< Me!> _Jeanne seethed. _< He’s saying they put your terrified, furious _ixcila _inside of me. They did it to break you. >_

“But I am so glad you are here,” Crayak sighed, and four arms the size of sequoias split apart from the mass and made a bizarre welcoming gesture. “There are so few in this universe with true _ambition._ Even the ones capable of grasping my entire vision at once rarely have the wherewithal to pursue it with me. 

“And I have tried to find them.” The eye turned, painfully, terrifyingly slowly to the Drode, quaking next to me. “And I have failed, before.”

The Drode opened his neon mouth as if to beg for mercy, but no sound emerged.

“I did not believe Rachel was really dead, of course,” Crayak said to the Drode. “You were known as my wild card for a reason. But after all this time, I did not think this is how you would betray me.”

“She doesn’t deserve it!” The Drode found his voice, and though his shrieks were pathetic, I did not pity him. “I have served you for hundreds of years — I deserve it! I deserve the honor of serving at your side!”

“You deserve what I decide you deserve,” Crayak said. “I would kill you right now, if this wasn’t so much fun. And you _will_ die, Drode,” he mused. “One way or another.”

The Drode fell to his knees, crying, begging wildly for his life. Crayak twitched a finger, and suddenly the Drode was clutching his throat. Was he choking? Was Crayak _actually_ pulling a Darth Vader?!

No, I realized — the Drode was breathing, he just looked surprised, and unable to make a sound. Crayak had stolen his voice!

“I knew you were here the second you stepped off your ship, of course,” Crayak said. “I nearly destroyed your vessel as it approached. At first, I thought it might be survivors of the Andalite battle. But I decided to wait. I _hoped_ it might be you. I _hoped_ the Drode had lied about your apparent death in the Kelbrid bombings. I knew you would come to me, sooner or later.

“And when you stepped off your ship — oh, the _joy_ I felt! It has been so long since I had a pure, simple _thrill_ ,” Crayak said. “The things we will do together! The worlds we will conquer! The races we will create and the ones we will _destroy_!”

Fire blossomed around his eye, shooting impossibly high. It illuminated the darkness, and I saw, behind him, a span of insanely complex arteries and muscles, quivering up around the side of the ship, moving in unison with the cadence of his speech.

And then I understood. Crayak hadn’t simply been watching me through a security camera, or via some spy drone when I stepped out of the _Rachel_. His senses had been much more tactile than that. Crayak wasn’t just the monster in front me — _he was the ship himself._ I was as far down inside of the guts of the monster as I could be, and there was no escape.

The minotaur claw felt suddenly heavy in my hand. Now I knew. I couldn’t survive this. I couldn’t _hope_ to stop this. Crayak was everything. This wasn’t like Toomin versus Father at all. _Father was just a sea sponge, for crying out loud._ Crayak was advanced, and brilliant, and deadly, and after all this time, I still knew next to nothing about him.

_< I will not let you give up!>_ Jeanne said. 

But I could hear that her words were hollow and blustery. She was brave. I was brave, too. But bravery only got you so far, and I was at the end of the road.

“So what’s next?” I asked, trying to sound confident.

The base of the triangle split apart into a facsimile of a smile, and to my disgust, I saw it lined with red-rimmed teeth. Now I knew where _that_ particular facet of The One had come from.

“First, let us watch the annihilation of our old enemy,” Crayak said. One of his appendages reached for me, molding itself into the shape of a hand, larger than mind, with seven fingers. 

“Take my hand,” he said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a final chapter count, ya'll. This story will end with chapter 63. 
> 
> I haven't finished it quite yet (I'm locked into an awesome groove of writing 1,000 words a day, in the morning -- it's awesome), but I'll likely be done with it by the end of the weekend. That means that after this chapter, you'll have eight more installments before the conclusion. I shouldn't have any problem continuing to hit the one-every-two-days deadline, which I'm really pumped about.
> 
> I don't have much to say about this chapter except... things are about to get crazy Crayak weird. I'm excited you're along for the ride.
> 
> Next chapter to be released Sunday, Jan. 13 at 9 p.m. ET.


	56. The Killing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crayak revels in his power over Rachel.

I didn’t want to take Crayak’s offered arm, but what choice did I have? Trembling, I reached up and grasped it decisively and firmly. Behind me, the Drode made a sound of disgust.

“Come with me, Rachel,” Crayak said. “Let us look at the Ellimist now.”

The ceiling of the room dissolved into the Ketran horizon. The effect was dizzying; up was now down, and down was now up! My stomach lurched at the disorientation, and I nearly stumbled.

Beside me, Crayak laughed thunderously. I could feel his laughter as it pulsed down and shook me. “You will adjust,” he said. “After a time, spatial orientation becomes a mere detail, and not an interesting one.”

Above be (or below me?) the Ellimist battled The One as it attempted to consume him. His titanic form had shrank considerably since he first appeared; his arms did not reach as far, and his legs did not push as strongly. His hands continued to flail, plucking the tendrils off of himself, ripping them apart and flinging them to the distance, where they exploded in fiery bursts on the volcanic wasteland. The Kelbrids fought desperately around him, peeling in close, exploding into The One with their lasers and their bombs, but every strike only bought the Ellimist a few more minutes of life.

“You have delivered him to us,” Crayak said, his sigh rapturous. “Oh, to see him struggle! To see him in pain, when for all this life he could cause me so much! Ah, ah! I never dreamed this moment would come, he was so _good_ at his foolish games. And as long as he was free, I was damned to play them. Death for life, and life for death! Blood for seeds — he sowed his crops in secret places, always faster than I could salt them.”

“I was poised for a great victory, did you know that? What culminated on Earth represented an enormous opportunity, ” He waved his hand toward the Ellimist. “ _One small move —_ that was all I could do to assert my dominance. We each were granted a single stroke, as small, and as secret as possible.” He smiled. “Of course… both of us bent the rules from time to time, as you might remember.”

Yes, I did remember. The Ellimist had not so subtly guided us toward the Yeerk’s Kandrona, early in the war. An in an even more egregious example, he had tweaked time and space around myself and Tobias, resulting in our stumbling upon the first free Hork Bajir.

“What did you do, then?” I asked. “What did you change?”

He laughed like I had asked him _just the funniest thing._

“I’ll show you,” he said.

*

I don’t know what I expected, as the surface of Ket dissolved into darkness, leaving myself and Crayak standing in a bleak void. What was his one, single move?

The ground below us shifted into shimmering, dark waves. I looked down at my feet, and saw small, dark shapes moving beneath the surface.

_Yeerks._

“They are incredible creatures, these Yeerks,” Crayak said. “I did not design them, nor the Ellimist. They are a product of evolution. A brilliant one. Sometimes the forces of nature make the greatest of creatures.”

The surface of the pool glittered. I could feel myself sinking into it. The brackish liquid rose up over my face. I gasped, wondering how I could breathe — and inhaled air. This wasn’t real, then. Some kind of memory.

Crayak chuckled at my discomfort. “I came to their planet long ago, long before the Andalites stumbled across them. I intended to destroy them, like I destroyed the Pemalites, and the Nostnavay, and the Mamathisk.”

He was bragging, I realized, and I felt sick to my stomach.

“I had recently created a race that I found to be a disappointment; they were awkward, ungainly, and unintelligent. I decided to deploy the entirety of their species to the Yeerk homeworld, and give them instructions to complete a massacre.”

I heard splashes, and I saw figures dropping into the muck around me. I squinted; somewhere, a sun was rising.

“I intended for all of my creations to die; they were not particularly adept at swimming,” Crayak said. “And then… something very unexpected happened.”

I heard thrashing behind me, and I turned to see a Gedd rise above the water, its face twisted in panic. In the better light, I could make out the tail of a Yeerk slipping into its ear.

“You created the Gedds?!”

“Yes,” Crayak said. “And you are witnessing the very first Yeerk infestation.”

The Gedd in front of me wailed and swung its arm, digging against its ear. But the Yeerk was too far in, it was too late. The Gedd slowed, falling back into the water, and it vanished beneath the waves.

Crayak leaned forward, expectantly.

Suddenly, the Gedd lunged up, gasping for air. Its eyes swung wide — left, right. Its limbs flailed. It went under again, and then came back up.

“You see,” Crayak said. “The Gedds did not know how to swim. _But the Yeerks do.”_

“You left them there,” I said. “And you let it play out. You started all of this. The Yeerks could have evolved on their own — they could have found their own way.”

Something clicked into place, an old mystery we had uncovered long ago. “Some did get away from you — didn’t they? The Yoorts — they became part of the Iskoort. They found a better way. But the ones on the homeworld… you forced them to stay parasites.”

“Yes,” Crayak said. “Some of them were being transported off the homeworld, little by little, by a ramscoop ship collecting the Kandrona-charged liquid. They were scooping the Yeerks up by accident, and keeping them as pets. You might know the race. They were called the _Ridenya_ , and I destroyed them completely.”

“Not all of them,” I said, remembering that they, along with the Ketrans, had become the Kelbrids. “You missed a few.”

His lip curled, revealing those red teeth. “Yes. Some of them escaped. And some of the Yeerks did too, and became the Yoorts. I intended to destroy them, and you… but I failed in that too, didn’t I?”

An image appeared in front of us, a Howler and a tiger, locked in freefall, tearing into each other, snarling, whirling flesh. I shivered, remembering our time on Iskoort, and how we had nearly failed.

*

“Why?” I asked. “Why go to all the trouble? What were you trying to do?”

Crayak’s body lurched, and suddenly, in front of us, a tall Andalite appeared, walking slowly through the grass. It held an Andalite infant, but the child did not move.

With a start, I realized this was the Ellimist, from when he had lived among the Andalites. He was carrying his dead child, pain written across his face.

“I wanted to kill them all,” Crayak said. “I wanted to kill his adopted species. I wanted to make them suffer like no other species had ever suffered at my hands.”

“Because they inspired him,” I said. “He created the Pemalites because of them. They showed him how to beat you. He knew that if he created life faster than you could kill it, you would lose.”

Crayak shuddered, the fire around his eye flickering madly, enigmatically. And then he laughed again. “You speak so bluntly! It is refreshing. I am _surrounded_ by sycophants.”

The Drode whimpered in the darkness.

“The Andalites proved hard to kill — their numbers grew, and they gained in strength. As their forces amassed, so did their resilience.

“But strange things happen when a warlike people embraces civilization — they adopt morals. Codes of conduct. Within that context, _weakness_ grows like a cancer. It grew in the Andalites, sliver by sliver. Intellectuals born in softer times spoke out during the crueler ones.”

He cackled. “You and I agree: those with the best intentions unleash the greatest evil.”

“Seerow’s Kindness,” I said.

“Yes,” he said. “Seerow’s Kindness. That idealistic fool handed me the key to the lock I needed. I watched as the Yeerks roared across the galaxy. They would give me the opening to destroy the Andalites, all within the rules of our game.”

He ran a long, ugly finger across the back of my shoulder, and I resisted an tear it off of me. “But I did bend the rules from time to time, as I have said.”

*

Around us, threads of light shot through the darkness. There were the Yeerks — enslaving, dominating, subjecting other races as they ripped across the galaxy. The Andalites followed, scorching and burning in their war. Both sides met at the planet of the Hork Bajir, and I watched as a million streaks quivered into nothing and vanished. The Yeerks moved on, and so did the Andalites.

And then — from far away, I saw a single beam of purple hurtling toward another knot of threads, billions of them, interconnected and humming across each other with impossible intricacy. This was _Earth_ , I realized — and the Yeerks were already there, dancing amid those lines, weaving seamlessly and secretly into them. The beam of purple hurtled toward the mess of it — and then I saw five other lines rise up to meet it.

_This was the Animorphs_ , I realized, with awe. This weaving, looping braid represented the time we spent on Earth together.

And the purple was…

“Elfangor,” I whispered.

“He rose in my vision,” Crayak said. “It became increasingly clear that the role he would play was not insignificant. I saw five children, and I saw how powerful they would become, and how broken the war would leave them. You would _hate_ the Andalites, and you would help me destroy them. I wanted to recruit you.”

The scene around me finally snapped into focus: we were in a biology classroom at my school. A small terrarium sat above a shelf of bunsen burners. A skeleton dangled in the corner.

A teenage girl was behind the teacher’s desk, but she definitely wasn’t doing homework. She had written THE SHARING: POTENTIAL RECRUITS on the board, and was jotting down names.

“I thought it would be simple,” Crayak said, his lips curling. “Infest someone close to you, and then tempt the Yeerk with delusions of power. It was bending the rules, yes… but I wasn’t breaking them.”

The door opened, and Tom Berenson walked inside.

“I’m sorry,” he said to the girl, surprise blossoming across his face. “I — I thought this was my history class.” His eyes clouded with confusion. “I must have taken a wrong turn, somehow.”

The girl looked at him, her gaze disturbed and concerned. She saw that his eyes flicked to the blackboard.

“What’s _The Sharing?_ ” He asked. 

She smiled.

*

“You caused Tom’s infestation!”

“I guided the Yeerk to his ear,” Crayak said. “Did you know that Yeerks dream? They dream very vividly, once they have taken a host. And I crept into that Yeerk’s dream… and I promised him _power._ ”

Around us, the girl and Tom melted away into an intricate pattern of pulsing, twisting threads. I recognized it from my time in the Ellimist’s memories — this was the void he had glimpsed when he had travelled through the black hole. This was the energy that changed him into a god.

“But even then, you interfered with my plans,” he said.

Jake’s face appeared in the darkness. His face was contorted in pain and fear.

“His infestation,” I whispered. “Jake was infested with Tom’s old Yeerk — the Yeerk you influenced.”

“Yes,” Crayak said, sounding annoyed. “I did not expect Jake to be infested. And I did not expect you to kill his Yeerk. And I did _not_ expect that the death inside of Jake’s head would allow him to glimpse… me.”

Jake’s face turned upwards, facing that great glowing, red eye. My cousin quailed in fear, and then he vanished.

“ _Intriguing_ , yes,” Crayak said. “But frustrating all the same. The death of that Yeerk caused me to believe I had lost my influence in the war, and thus, my chance to destroy the Andalites. I tried to extend it in other ways, using my Drode. He is not as bound by the game as I am.”

“The Pemalite ship,” I said. “And David — you helped David come back.”

“None of it moved me closer to my goal,” Crayak said. “I was ready to abandon my efforts on Earth when an interesting thing happened: A Yeerk sought me out. He was in the head of Tom Berenson, and, unknown to me, my influence on Tom’s former Yeerk had worn off on his host. My memory was buried, some mystery of the link between host and Yeerk. The new Yeerk saw just enough to be curious. He reached out to me. He sought power, and I tempted him with it.”

I thought of Tom, from Lourdes’s memories, in the Blade Ship, hours before his death. We had watched him standing in front of a monitor, discussing things with Crayak. We hadn’t been able to hear him, but we had guessed at how Crayak had lured him.

“What did you promise him?” I asked.

“Everything,” Crayak laughed. “He was quite insane by the end of it. You know, I think I just _have that effect_ on people. Ambition and insanity in a Yeerk are _desirable_ traits.”

His tone changed. “But this part I saw quite clearly.” A line of spacetime sparked across the galaxy, igniting planets and cutting through other threads. “This is what was to come — a being of immense power tearing through the galaxy, scorching and burning, in Tom’s form.”

“Jake wouldn’t have let that happen,” I said. “He would have stopped him.”

“You might think so,” Crayak’s smile gleamed. “But war, as it always does to lesser beings, _changed_ him. He would not have reacted well to his brother’s loss. Determined to get him back, _he_ would have cut across the galaxy too — “

Another thread — this one splitting off from four surrounding it, breaking into the darkness. Where it touched, it burned.

“I told you Rachel,” Crayak said. “Those with the greatest of intentions do the most evil.”

“But I stopped you,” I said. “I killed Tom before his Yeerk could escape. You couldn’t get your pawn. You couldn’t get Jake. They didn’t tear across the universe, and they didn’t kill anyone.”

The threads winked out, and we were back on the bridge. The Ellimist was on the view screen in front of us, being slowly overcome by the One.

“It would have been _beautiful,”_ Crayak sighed. “But, the death of that dream leaves me with a fortunate reality: A Chee, the Blade Ship, and corners of it splattered with your blood. And from it: to lay a trap for the one enemy I could not destroy. Once he is part of me, I will _burn_ his creations.”

*

_< Rachel, do you feel that?>_

For a second, I had no idea what Jeanne was talking about. I felt sheer terror, and nausea from my shifting, hurtling perspective. But then I saw what she meant. I felt something trembling in me that wasn’t fear. An invisible force, stretching from my chest to my head. I seemed to be being gently pulled towards the Ellimist, a small tug I could barely feel, but growing stronger by the second.

_< It’s affecting me,> _Jeanne said. I detected a trace of fear in her voice. _< It makes me slower — weaker. Rachel, what is that?!>_

I looked at the enormous seven-fingered hand I was holding, extra digits like giant crosses between pinkies and thumbs, woven around my palms.

“Do you feel it?” Crayak said, his eye turning toward me. “Of course you do. The geon energy resonates in you, however weakly, as it resonates in me. I wonder…”

To my horror, I felt something probe my mind. It reminded me of the way Father reached into the Ellimist, long, long ago. I felt it slip against my thoughts, something alien, something foreign.

Crayak was slipping into my mind.

_Jeanne, be quiet,_ I whispered. _Don’t make a sound. Don’t say anything._

She took an order like a soldier, lapsing immediately into silence. Crayak rumbled against my mind, his eye focused on me. I trembled beneath it.

The tendril began to withdraw, and I thought — I really did — that we would be okay.

“Interesting,” Crayak said. “I knew the Ellimist left you the geon frequency, but I did not expect it to enable you in this way.”

“What do you mean?”

“You have the ability to acquire minds and hold them within yourself, as the Ellimist did. As I can do.”

He grinned. “But it is a foolish ability. There can be no greater intellect than one’s own. And everyone I control — must be fully in my control.”

I felt Jeanne spring to life inside my head! She was snarling and slashing at Crayak’s probe. He took her blows, wearing an almost amused expression.

“Jeanne!” I cried out.

_< Fight him, Rachel!> _she cried out. _< Don’t stop fighting, never —>_

“Enough,” Crayak said.

And then, with barely the flick of a finger, he reached into my mind and snuffed Jeanne out of existence, the way someone might wet their fingers and pluck the wick of a candle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed this chapter -- it was the hardest one to write, by far. I won't say how many times I've revised it, because honestly, I don't know! It's the closest thing I'll probably ever come to writing "The Crayak Chronicles."
> 
> As for the ending of this chapter... I'll wait to say anything until I see how ya'll react to it.
> 
> I haven't finished the last chapter, although I'm deep into it. The last two chapters are going to be larger ones, and the final one will be the longest by far. I am deeply enjoying writing it, and savoring every word.
> 
> Thanks again for sticking with me.
> 
> Next chapter to be released Tuesday, Jan. 15, at 9 p.m. ET.


	57. Rage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rachel does what Rachel does.

**** “NO!”

I screamed it, and I yanked my palm out of Crayak’s grip. His probe into my mind lazily retreated. His eye blazed with amusement.

“ _Jeanne!”_ I screamed. “ _JEANNE_!”

But she was gone. Not suppressed — not funneled into some little corner — dead. Plucked out and torn apart, with the swiftest and easiest of motions from Crayak. I searched in vain for something — any sign of her — but she was lost.

“You killed her!” I shouted. “You killed her!”

“One among countless,” he said.

I kept calling out for her in my mind. Something —  _any part of her —_ must be left. A yawning chasm had been torn open wide inside me, tectonic plates wrenched apart by Crayak’s wanton cruelty. I teetered on the edge of that Grand Canyon of grief. I looked down into it, and I nearly let myself fall inside.

But then — emerging from that bleakness — _rage_.

“You’re a monster,” I said, as my anger metastasized throughout my body. “You’re a rabid dog. You’re _worse_ than a rabid dog, because you know what you’re doing. You’ve always known. You kill and burn and hurt and it _delights_ you. You _feed_ on it.”

“We are so alike, you and I,” Crayak said. He sounded _delighted_.

“I was, once,” I said, and then I slipped my hand beneath my sash, my fingers curling around the Minotaur claw I still kept concealed. “Not any more. I’m one of the good guys. I’m one of those idiots with good intentions, because they’re the bravest of all of us. I’ll die _again_ before I serve you.”

Crayak was the size of a mountain — more than a mountain, if he was indeed the ship. I knew I couldn’t defeat him. 

But maybe I could _hurt_ him… like a housefly bites a human.

I screamed, lurched forward, and I _slashed_ his gnarling, twisted arm.

*

Limbs clattered to the ground around me — fingers, wrists, legs. Raw organs slithered and bone rattled to the floor. I cut and I tore into Crayak, pieces of him sloughing out of his fat flesh and landing wetly around me. I was the grizzly bear — I was the elephant — I was _Rachel_ , and I was here to kill.

I don’t know long I raged against him before I heard his voice, powerful and distinct, inside my mind: ENOUGH.

The viscera around me vanished into tiny puffs of smoke. I was still soaked in blood, in my hair, my clothes, my eyes. It dripped off my knife and my body as I stood, my chest heaving from exertion, my blade still ready to cut.

I looked up to meet that vast eye. Back in my throat, I uttered a small groan. Crayak was entirely unaffected by my outburst. All these limbs, bone, guts — a show for my benefit. Another small, unique torture.

“You showed so much promise,” Crayak said, and then he lifted a _massive_ arm above me, his flesh shaking and twisting into a sort of skin mallet. “I thought you would come around.”

He was going to crush me in one, sweeping motion. I was going to die again, and there was nothing I could do.

_So I grinned_.

I grinned at him, and I opened my arms up wide. I spit blood out of my mouth and made sure that his bloody eye could see me.

“What are you waiting for?!” I shouted. _“LET’S DO IT!”_

“ _CRAYAK!”_

The voice was loud — impossibly loud, like a jet engine going off next to my head. It rattled my eyeballs in their sockets and made me grit down my teeth. It wasn’t a scream, but a bark, abrupt and cutting.

Above me, the mallet wavered. Crayak’s great eye turned from me, interested.

“Leave her alone, Crayak!”

I twisted my head around, and my jaw nearly hit the floor.

“JAKE!” I shouted. “GET OUT OF HERE!”

My cousin was stepping out of the doorway, past the Drode, pressed up against a wall in hateful terror. Jake looked angry and determined, a scowl draped across his face. He walked confidently across the floor, staring intensely at the monster in front of me. He looked — actually, he looked pretty good. He was wearing a long tan coat that hung to the floor. It was like something out of a movie.

“Well, now. Isn’t _this_ a pleasant surprise,” Crayak said. “The Berensons, all together now. Except for your brother, I suppose.” He laughed cruelly.

Jake came next to me.

“What are you doing?!” I said furiously. “This is over. It’s — “

“Here’s what’s going to happen,” Jake said. “You’re going to call your attack dog off the Ellimist,” he nodded to where the Ellimist was still desperately prying tendrils out of his ears. “ — and Rachel and I are going to leave. This happens right now, or you die.”

Crayak _burst_ into laughter, his guffaws ringing out and echoing across the cavernous space.

“There will be no second chance,” Jake said calmly.

_What was he doing?_ Even for an Animorph, this was wholly insane. He had to be bluffing — stalling for time, making a play for — something. It had to be a strategy, didn’t it? He had to have a plan.

_Jeanne_ — I started to ask, inside my mind, but then I remembered she was dead, and I felt that wide chasm of emptiness grow inside me.

Crayak’s maw opened wider than ever before, revealing rows upon rows of those teeth. To my horror, I saw thousands — maybe millions — of little, tiny, flicking tongues among them.

“I will take pleasure in killing you,” Crayak said.

And then he brought his skin mallet crashing down.

*

It stopped a foot above my head so abruptly that I thought maybe it had been frozen in place. _Some trick of the Ellimist?_

A manic thought burst through my mind — was he _again_ visiting me at the instant of my death? Was I about to get _Biography of an Ellimist: Part Two?_

No — above me, the mallet quivered in surprise, beads of moisture dripping off the undulating flesh. Time had not been stopped — but Crayak had.

It was Jake!

He stood, one arm raised and his fingers spread, holding back something that must have been coming down with the weight of the titanic. My jaw dropped.

“ _Jake?!_ ” I said.

He turned, and a sad smile spread across his face.

“Hey, Rachel.”

And then he dropped his hologram, and I was standing next to Erek the Chee.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Coming in under the wire (I've been on a plane for many hours, and I'm not exactly sure what time it is where I came from!), but luckily, this one required little editing.
> 
> It's shorter than I remembered, but on re-read, it felt longer to me.
> 
> Still not quite yet at the finish line... the last chapter is going to run long.
> 
> Next chapter to be released Thursday, Jan. 17 at 9 p.m. ET.


	58. The God in the Machine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Unleashed, Erek is a terrifying force.

**** “A Chee!” Crayak said. He sounded delighted, like a child opening a present on Christmas morning. Above us, his mallet dissolved into the air. The iris of his fiery eye expanded amid the flames.

“You have one more chance to take my offer,” Erek said. “Release the Ellimist. Allow Rachel and I to walk free. Or die.”

“Your name is _Erek_ , isn’t it?” Crayak said. “I know about you. I know about _all_ of you. The last evidence of the Pemalite world. Once the Ellimist is under my control, I will wipe out the remnants of your race. It will be the _first_ thing I do.”

Erek looked unmoved. “You have a _choice_ , Crayak,” he said. “Live, or die.”

“I choose to _kill_ ,” Crayak said.

Suddenly, Erek lurched toward me, grabbed me by the shoulders and _flung_ me across the room. I cried out in surprise, and then yelped as I landed, roughly, on the floor, my chest exploding with pain as I probably broke _another_ rib. I managed to keep myself from hitting my head, but I still saw stars when I got the wind knocked out of me. In spite of all of it, I gritted my teeth and spit through the agony, forcing myself through my sheer rage to stand.

I turned just in time to see Erek _leap_ into the air, hurtling himself toward Crayak’s massive blob of a body and disappear into the folds of skin, his android arms ripping and tearing. A geyser of blood exploded from where he vanished into Crayak’s mass, body parts erupting out of it.

_I guess that crystal did the trick_ , I thought.

Crayak cried out in surprise and anger as Erek attacked. The fire intensified around his eye until it was so bright I had to look away. I heard a watery, gushing sound, and when I looked up, I saw Erek _erupt_ out of Crayak’s side, dragging what seemed to be several kiddie pools worth of viscera behind him.

But Erek wasn’t done — some sensors in his legs were able to correct after his expulsion, and he recalibrated, quickly regaining his balance. He pivoted himself, lifting two arms that were expanding in size as machinery not used for millennia clicked into place. Laser beams — hot and furious — _burst_ out of his fingertips and left sizzling, gaping holes in Crayak’s flesh.

Crayak groaned angrily, his teeth folding in on themselves revealing something behind them — a quivering, glistening mass, curling up from the back of his throat. To my horror and disgust, I saw that it had eyes the same color as his bloody red one, and more grinding, furious teeth.

“You murdered my friends!” Erek shouted as he sliced. “This is for the Pemalites — this is for what you did!”

Two metal plates on Erek’s back opened, and thick cables burst out of them, snaking through the air. They were actually _rocket_ powered, I realized, as little flickers of light around their edges revealed the presence of guidance forces, drawing the cables around Crayak’s mouth, cutting into his bulk and containing it. Erek _tightened_ them and pulled himself closer to Crayak, holding down the monster while slicing and cutting, the blood foaming around him.

It was the most shocking thing I had ever seen.

I backed away from the spectacle. I could only hurt Erek’s chances by being too close to the melee. If I could find some kind of weapon, maybe I could contribute…

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the Drode darting back behind Crayak. He was headed for the door as fast as his stumpy little legs could carry him, as useless in this battle as I was.

I took off after him, yanking the Minotaur claw out of my pocket as I ran. As a teenage girl, I couldn’t hope to hurt Crayak, not the way Erek could. But I could make sure that the Drode wouldn’t live to terrorize anyone else ever again.

I came up on the Drode from behind. In all the chaos around us, he didn’t notice me. He was moving in a panicked state, his little arms and legs scrabbling away. I unleashed a full-throated yell, raising up my claw —

He slipped! The floor of the ship was coated in Crayak’s blood, and he skidded in it. I swung anyway, but I overbalanced and went down with him, the two of us careening through the gore like two kids on a slip-n-slide at a really messed up birthday party. I grabbed his leg with my free hand as I sailed by, dragging him along with me.

“Not this time, Drode — “ I said, but then he kicked me in the face.

Turns out, from a short distance, those stubby legs pack some _oomph_. My head rattled backward, and bright colors exploded across my eyes. I swung out blindly, feeling a satisfied _crunch_ as my claw connected. The Drode shrieked from pain.

I grinned and wiped the blood out of my eyes. I’d gotten him in his alien version of a calf. It hadn’t been a deep cut, but he still looked shocked by it.

“I’m going to kill you,” I said, dragging myself closer to him.

“Master!” He he yelped, turning toward the flailing Crayak. “Master, please! Kill her!”

“He won’t help you,” I said. Erek was nearly unrecognizable now — every portion of his body had expanded into something attacking Crayak. His eyes — projecting cutting red lasers. One arm — slashing blades, whipping around in circles. He would leap over Crayak, slashing at the appendages that came his way. He was going for the eye, I could see, and he was making _progress_.

“Master!” the Drode pleaded. “Don’t let her kill _me!”_

I stepped closer to the Drode, my heart pounding. “Face it, your Master is getting his butt kicked, Drode.” I raised the claw and prepared to deliver the final blow. “And if I wasn’t about to kill you, he would!”

My hand froze. I froze. Everything except the Drode snapped into place, unmoving. I couldn’t even move my eyes, but I was _aware_ of what was around me. I could see Erek in my peripheral vision, in the middle of a leap, one of his limbs turned into some kind of actual honest-to-God _chainsaw_ poised to slash at the center of Crayak’s giant eyeball. He had been locked into place too, in mid-air, another violation of the laws of physics. On the giant view screen, the Ellimist still flailed as The One began to overtake his head. He had grown in size considerably — he must be trying to defeat the one through sheer bulk. There was very little time left, now.

The Drode cowered in front of me for an instant, before he realized that I could not move and he could. He darted away, vanishing into the darkness of the back of the room.

_I HAVEN’T HAD THIS MUCH FUN IN A MILLION YEARS!_

My heart sank. It was Crayak’s voice, and from its deep, satisfied tone, we hadn’t just failed to hurt Crayak — we had _pleased_ him.

"I don’t know how you got here, Chee, and I don’t care. I much prefer your kind in this altered state! I will keep you alive, and you will learn to serve me, in time. You will be a _joy_ to watch destroy worlds. _”_

I lurched forward, unfrozen. Erek also shot ahead, vanishing into the darkness of Crayak’s eye. I expected a fountain of blood, but he passed through with a cry of surprise. _The eye was empty_. He emerged a second later from somewhere behind Crayak, the expanded limbs of his body returning to their normal selves.

“I can feel it now!” Crayak roared aloud. “As the One takes control, I can _feel_ his strength pouring into me! Toomin _will_ serve me! And with him, I will build a race that serves one master! _AND I WILL BE ITS GOD!_ ”

Crayak’s flesh parted to reveal some kind of massive, cybernetic limb, and I saw it curl outwards at a breakneck pace. It tore into Erek, throwing him across the room. To my horror, I saw it ripping into him, tearing into his circuits and leaving pieces of him scattered across the floor.

“NO!” I screamed — but I couldn’t get close! Not even an elephant could have withstood those snarling, chomping bits of metal.

“ _You. Will. Serve. Me_.” Crayak said, but most shocking was the _casual_ way he said it. We had never had a chance. We had only entertained him a little bit, before the end.

“You will live,” Crayak said to Erek. “But you will feel — “ he broke off, his eye fixated on the gigantic screen.

I turned. The Ellimist had grown _enormous_ now — he filled nearly the entire viewport, and we could see his recantation in shocking, lurid detail. His skin — the flesh of an old man — flowed and melted where The One touched it, each of those vicious tendrils breaking him down, making him into something that could be drunk and consumed. It was so large, I could actually see the way those threads undulated, the way they made him part of —

I blinked. Something wasn’t right. The Equatorial High Crystal had grown in size as well — it had come as high as the Ellimist’s knee when he had first arrived, but now, it barely reached the bottom of his shin. That didn’t make sense. If the Ellimist had grown larger, then it should have —

Suddenly, Erek grabbed me.

“We have to go,” he said. “ _Now_!”

I didn’t question him. He lifted me with his android arms, and I wrapped him into a bear hug. He began to sprint away from Crayak, who was swirling above us in some kind of insanely complicated, aerobatic ballet. His limbs flailing so quickly, with their synthetic components hooking into ports on the walls. Thousands of them found anchors, lifting up the bulk of his mass. Erek raced away from it, and Crayak ignored him… _why?_

And then I understood, and my jaw dropped as I understood. The Ellimist hadn’t gotten bigger —  _we had gotten closer to him!_

“ _THEY. DID. NOT!”_ I shouted.

“Apparently _they did_!” He replied, and I saw the blue shimmer of his force fields as they surrounded us. The Equatorial High Crystal was front and center, filling the entire center of the screen as we hurtled toward it, riding a spaceship the size of a small asteroid barreling out of the sky. “We are _ramming the planet_! _”_

Everything glowed with a bloody shimmer as the crystal’s color filled the entirety of the screen, and then Erek leaped into it, and everything crunched and tore and squealed as metal and flesh and bone crashed into the surface of Ket.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who among us hasn't wanted to see the Chee in full-blown bloodthirsty action? This was a fun one to write, hopefully no one was too turned off by the ick-factor.
> 
> I'd also like to point out the title of this chapter -- one which I've been thinking about since the beginning of this story. There are a lot of plays on "deus ex machina" going on right now: the Ellimist caught in Crayak's trap, Crayak manifesting as an entity interwoven within his ship, Erek the android appearing to come to the rescue. This chapter is supposed to be something of an inversion of that idea -- the Ellimist is trapped and unable to help, and Erek is ultimately powerless in the force of evil.
> 
> I anticipate that I will write the final lines of this story tomorrow morning, which is really wild to think about. The last chapter will run MUCH longer than every other chapter -- I'm not rushing the ending of this story. I'm nervous about how ya'll will react, but I feel really good about it.
> 
> Thanks for coming on this ride with me.
> 
> Next chapter to be released on Saturday, Jan. 19 at 9 p.m. ET.


	59. The Revenge of the Chee

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Ket burns, The One rises.

All I could hear around me was a terrific wrenching, ripping noise. I tried to watch at first, but everything was moving far too fast! It was a blur of Crayak, the Ellimist, and shrieking metal. I finally closed my eyes, unable to stand the sight. I held onto Erek tightly and buried my face into his mechanical shoulder blade, waiting for all of it to end.

*

_“_ Rachel.”

I opened my eyes.

We were surrounded by darkness, and when Erek’s voice stopped, it was completely silent. It was like I was lost in a void. It was so dark I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face.

Strangely, I didn’t feel afraid. If I had died, and this is what came next, it wasn’t so bad.

But I had died before, I realized, and I didn’t remember anything like this.

“Don’t speak, Rachel. Breathe slowly. There isn’t much air. And stay calm. I can get us out of this.”

_Okay_ , I thought, concentrating on my breathing. I had no choice but to trust Erek. If he wanted to kill me, he could — his programming now allowed it, and, at the moment, I was defenseless.

“We are somewhere beneath the wreckage,” Erek said. “I am _going_ to dig us out. But you need to let go of me for me to be able to do it. Let go of me, and stay exactly where you are.”

“Okay,” I whispered, with as little air as possible. I fought back sheer terror and released him. It was much harder than I thought it would be, and my head swam with vertigo. With no light or reference, I couldn’t tell which way was up or down, and it was messing with my inner ear.

“Good,” Erek said. “Reach a hand up, and feel for my back.”

I did, shakily. He was hot to the touch, although it didn’t burn me.

“All right,” Erek said. “Here we go. Move with me as I go. We’ll need to go quickly.”

Sound — insanely loud — rattled through the space. We were moving forward! Some mechanical pieces I couldn’t see were thrusting, cutting, shifting and pushing. He was _bulldozing_ his way out of the ruins of Crayak’s ship, one shear at a time!

I followed him at a slow walk. It was impossible to know how far we had to go, and the space was heating up. Erek must have been offloading some of the heat via his force fields, but I was soon sweating.

_Ignore it,_ I instructed myself. _Follow him_. _Sometimes we take our knocks._

The air was becoming increasingly harder to breathe. Metal lurched around us, and, once, I felt my foot land on something that slurped, causing me to shudder involuntarily.

Then — light!

Just a tiny bit, reflected off some bits of debris, but enough to make Erek pause.

“Grab onto me again,” he said. “We have enough hollowed out where I can make a jump of it, I think.”

I did not need to be told twice. I latched onto him, and I felt his powerful legs lower and tense, then _spring_ as he shot upwards, driving us through the mess.

When we exploded out of it, the cool night air was so bright it hurt my eyes, and even the dim light reminded me of a sunny day. Erek clattered his way forward, down a mountain of wreckage, using his legs to propel us over the weak spots.

Looking back, I saw the vast debris field of Crayak’s ship, covering the wasteland as far as the eye could see. It had landed almost squarely on the ruins of the Equatorial High Crystal, partly skewering itself on its purple peak. About a quarter of the ship, I saw, was intact, but most of it had been shredded by the impact. We had hit it facing away from the mountain range, so, incredibly, the jungle had not been destroyed.

Trying to make sense of the scale of all of it made me dizzy, so I focused on that one splotch of green.

“There,” I said to Erek. “The trees. We should go there.”

He had us on the ground in an instant, and in a few minutes, we had reached the edge of the forest. I sank to my knees, breathing in the cool air, and I’m not ashamed to say I _literally_ hugged a tree.

Erek stayed near me, shifting his gaze from side to side, scanning the horizon.

“You did it,” I said, finally catching my breath and allowing some of my muscles to relax. “You used the Pemalite crystal. You decided to fight.”

“Yes,” Erek said.

“Thank you,” I replied. He didn’t look at me, and he didn’t say anything. I thought of the battle at Matcom, and how Erek wept afterward. He had wailed into his hands, unable to grapple with the horror of what he had done. He didn’t look like that now. He looked in control, and fierce, and ready for the next threat.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

He looked at me, and then he looked down at his hands. The metal was stained — maybe forever, from the way it dripped between the intricacies of the circuits — the deep crimson of Crayak’s blood.

“Yes,” he said, finally. “I feel…” he trailed off.

“It felt good, didn’t it?” I said. “It felt good to fight.”

He nodded, very slowly. “Yes. Yes it did.”

I put my hand on his shoulder, and my brought my face close to his.

“Keep an eye on that,” I said. “That thing inside you, I mean. The thing that liked it. Be careful how much you feed it.”

His hologram eyes flickered into place, displaying a deep, soulful stare.

“Humans,” he mustered, finally. “Always teaching me something new.”

“Who says an old dog can’t learn new tricks?” I said, and he face split into a small, warm smile.

*

We were somewhat protected by the howling from the mountain range, but it was still there, boiling off the Howler ships and shaking the leaves of the jungle trees. The shrill squeal began to hurt after a few minutes, and in response, Erek increased his force field to give us greater protection.

“So let me guess,” I said to Erek. “Your whole ‘last stand against Crayak’ thing — it was a ruse, wasn’t it? A distraction?”

“That is correct.”

“While you were up there keeping him tied up…?”

“Lourdes was busy ripping through Crayak’s horde,” Erek said.

“And crashing his ship,” I added.

“Well — yes, but — admittedly, that wasn’t in our plan,” Erek said.

“What _was_ your plan?”

He shrugged, a little sheepishly. “We didn’t really have time to make one. Aximili and Jake showed up with the crystal and… well, we knew things were bad.”

My heart skipped. “Tobias — “

“Tobias is fine,” Erek said. “Jake ordered Ax to take the _Rachel_ back to Earth as soon as we left. Lourdes wanted revenge, and I went to find you.”

I exhaled, slowly. It felt like I had been holding my breath for hours. _Tobias was safe._

I also tried to imagine what it must have been like, for Lourdes to tear her way through Crayak’s horde. They had hurt her, over and over and over — and with a shot at revenge and the strength of an unleashed Chee, she must have been _fearsome._

_No wonder she crashed the ship,_ I mused.

With my concerns about Tobias eased, I surveyed the scene around me. The wreckage smoked and burned, huge jets of fire shooting out of some portions. I realized the Equatorial High Crystal sat much _lower_ than it had previously; the sheer force of Crayak’s ship had driven it deeply into the ground.

Beneath us, the planet suddenly rumbled, nearly knocking me to my knees.

“We don’t want to stay on here for long, do we?”

“We do not. The planet is severely destabilized,” Erek said. “The seismic activity has likely increased exponentially. I am surprised that Ket did not break apart entirely on impact. It still might, if the magma has been disturbed enough.”

“We can’t leave yet,” I said, pointing.

The Ellimist still stood, almost straddling the warehouse. I could see that the situation had become much more dire in only a few minutes; he _was_ shrinking, and The One was ensnarled across the entire left side of his body. The smaller he got, the more its thick black tendrils licked hungrily and tore at his skin.

“We have to help him,” I said. “How beaten up are you? Can you fight?”

“Wait,” Erek said, gritting his teeth. He had lowered his head, scanning across the wreckage across the horizon. “My sensors are reading… something. Something is coming toward us.”

“ _Crayak_?!”

“I can’t tell… much of my system has been damaged. I don’t have the detail I used to.”

“So he’s not dead,” I said, looking at the smoke across the sky. “Crashing his ship didn’t kill him.” I scanned the wreckage, looking for movement. Some glistening appendage. The fire from his eye.

“I believe this threat is aerial…” Erek said. “…there!”

He pointed, and I spotted a thin dark shape darting across the horizon. It was the Blade Ship!

“They do not seem to be affected by the Howling,” Erek muttered, crouching back into a defensive position. “That concerns me. If they are on Crayak’s side — “

“If it is Crayak… we’ll board the ship and take them out,” I said. “One by one. You don’t even have to fight, if you don’t want to. I’ll do it with my bare hands.”

He snorted, but nodded. The ship had definitely seen us. It was hurtling forward, keeping low in the sky. I watched for the sign of a heating Dracon cannon, but their weapons remained off and powered down.

And then I saw the flicker of a force field, identical to the one Erek was currently casting around me— 

<HEY GUYS!> Marco yelled, joyously. <We just crashed a planet! Hope you didn’t mind us… _dropping in!_ >

My scowl dissolved into a wide grin, and I barked out a laugh.

“They made it!” I shouted to Erek. “They’re alive!”

Suddenly, from the direction of the Ellimist: we heard a guttural, terrifying roar. It grew rapidly in sound, pulsating and throbbing. I turned around and watched in horror as dozens — no, _thousands —_ of creatures suddenly began to pour out of every nook and cranny of the warehouse beneath the Ellimist’s feet. Hork-Bajir, Taxxons — every nightmare we ever faced when fighting against the Yeerks was clawing out of the mountain and _sprinting_ toward us.

“Come on!” I motioned frantically toward the Blade Ship, which was rocketing toward us, but not fast enough. “We have to — “

And then the dirt _exploded_ under our feet, and the jungle was suddenly teeming with the forces of The One.

Erek responded instantly, leaping up and cutting with his eyes. I withdrew my minotaur claw, and sliced, catching the side of a Taxxon leering at me and spraying his blood all over the jungle floor. A Hork Bajir was right behind him, so I leaped backward, running along one of those jungle paths. He followed, grunting, but I managed to take him off guard when I leaped off the path and put my back up against a tree, _shoving_ him just before he could take a piece out of me with his claws. He fell, tripping over a smaller Gedd clattering behind him with some other weapon.

_Same old enemies, same old fumbles_ , I thought, a grin spreading across my face.

Unfortunately, I had lost Erek. With him gone, I wasn’t protected from the howling. It was getting louder, and the activity of the soldiers around us seemed to increase in response. I was going to be surrounded shortly, so I set my sights on climbing a large, gnarled Ketran tree. I pulled myself up — the bark was soft enough that I could sink my fingers into it, like grizzly bear claws. I darted up on limbs to reach higher ones, balancing quickly and then using my weight to leverage fast dismounts and landings.

I made a mental note to thank my mom for driving me to all those community ed gymnastics classes — they were really coming in handy now!

I was moving quickly up the tree, but still being followed by a Hork Bajir scurrying up the trunk. I scowled, twisting my body so I could get more leverage, and swiped my claw on a tree limb below me. It clattered to the ground, but that did not deter the leering Hork Bajir, who sneered and sank one of his spikes directly into the bark.

“Keryaak master!” He growled.

“Crayak… butthead,” I said, kicking him in the face. These Hork Bajir were uncontrolled by Yeerks and almost certainly not the brightest light bulbs in the room. Maybe if I thought about it, I could feel sympathy for them — they had been preyed on by Crayak, the same as Crayak had preyed on me.

But it’s hard to be too empathetic when an eight-foot salad chopper is trying to kill you any way they can, and I took some glee in watching green blood spurt out of his large nose when my boot connected with it.

He didn’t fall back as far as I thought he would though! He screamed and brought up his arm, sending a spike hurtling toward my waist —

— and suddenly a tiger was on his back, biting and clawing and tearing!

The Hork Bajir faltered, fumbling backwards, and fell from the tree.

I turned to Jake. “You just _had_ to wait until the last minute, didn’t you?”

<Sorry! They’re _everywhere._ We have to get back to the ship!>

From my vantage point, and without an alien about to slice me up, I could see the whole of the wreckage from Crayak’s ship littering the horizon. It gleamed of interlocking, moving bits of machinery, some portions of it still trying to perform whatever tasks had been commissioned of it long ago.

I frowned, peering at the scene intensely. Something about it was _wrong_ , but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

Below me, Marco and Cassie were fighting in a clearing in the forest, maintaining a defensive position. They were waiting for me! I shimmied down the tree as quickly as I could, Jake at my side, as we sprinted toward them.

Hork Bajir to the left! Jake snarled and took it down. Taxxon ahead! I leaped ahead and slashed. My claw left a gaping mark in its side, but my jaw dropped when I saw thousands of tiny black tendrils working along the sides of it.

<Don’t get too close to them!> Jake warned. <Remember — they’re controlled by The One!>

As we moved closer to the clearing, I saw Marco and Cassie engaged in heated, hand-to-hand battle with the creatures. Marco — swinging from the trees in gorilla morph, punching out a series of alien creatures that hung from its branches like snakes and seemed to attack with whiplike claws. Cassie, in wolf morph, was holding the perimeter, leaping between enemies and tearing out their throats.

<Hey, hey, hey!> Marco said, seeing me appear out of the trees. <Xena, you’re late to the party. It’s just like old times!>

<Ugh, The One got me,> Cassie yelled. Black tendrils were climbing up an injury along her side, curling up toward her head. My heart leaped into my chest, but I was surprised to hear that she sounded more annoyed than alarmed. <I’ve got to morph out!> Her face began to soften, and I breathed just a little easier, realizing that, for them at least, being recanted into The One was no different than any other injury, if they could morph it out before it became a problem.

Just then, the trees split open, and an enormous creature emerged. It towered over us, with multiple limbs and heads, every inch of it rippling with muscle. For an instant, I thought it was Crayak, slithered from his ruins and ready to tear us apart. But no — I realized. This was not Crayak. This was a monster that had terrified me in my first few minutes as an Animorph. This was the creature that had killed Elfangor — I couldn’t remember it’s name.

“An Antarean Bog!” Cassie yelled.

It lunged for us! One of its arms went for Marco, the other for Cassie. I gasped in horror as it reached for them —

_TSEEW! TSEEW!_

— until Dracon fire rained down from above, slicing into the creature’s flesh. It roared, confused and angry, looking up at the sky.

The _Rachel_ descended quickly, peppering it with rapid shots. The Bog Eater quailed beneath it, sinking back into the trees, snarling and snapping as it did.

<Way to go, Ax-man!> Marco yelled.

<Hello, everyone.> Ax said, in thought-speak. <Prince Jake, I apologize for ignoring your orders to return to Earth. I could not bring myself to leave you behind.>

<It’s fine!> Jake shouted. <But don’t call me _Prince_! >

And even though it isn’t possible for humans to transmit thought-speak outside of a morph, I swear that Ax heard what I was thinking, because he immediately sent me a private thought-speak message.

<Tobias is unharmed, Rachel.>

I exhaled, not even realizing that I had been holding my breath. 

“Where are the Chee?” I asked.

Cassie pointed at the sky, and I squinted before realizing that it was the Blade Ship, flickering with light across the sky. It was moving _fast_ — and heading straight for the closest Howler ship.

“We’re pretty sure that the thing powering the Ellimist-killing geon beam thing — it’s coming from the Howlers,” Cassie said. “Jake sent Lourdes and Erek up there to take them out.” Her voice dropped off as her face became more wolf than human, so she finished her words via thought. <The rest of us stayed behind to find you — Erek said you wouldn’t be far.>

<Ax, bring the _Rachel_ down, > Jake said. <We need to board — we have to get out of here!>

<This is not easily done, Prince Jake!> Ax shouted. He was filling the trees with fire from the _Rachel_ ’s cannons, keeping the boiling enemy horde at bay. <We will need to move quickly!>

Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement.

I whipped around, just in time to see something vanish into the undergrowth.

I shouldn’t have started running toward it. That was an unbelievably stupid move. I was with the people I loved, and our escape was _right_ above us.

But I never really was one to think things through. Whoever I used to be, and whoever I became, one thing stayed the same: I always leaped into battle.

And I wasn’t about to let the Drode get away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yesterday morning, around 7 a.m., sitting on the balcony of a hotel in Panama City, I wrote the final line of "The Trap." It's done!!!
> 
> I am feeling GREAT about it! I can't wait for you all to read the final chapter (clocking in at nearly 10k words!)
> 
> I briefly debated releasing all of it tonight... but that would be a bad call on my part. The last few chapters need to go through edits, and as much as I'd like to believe that all of my writing is perfect on the first try, my experiences of going through each chapter before publishing has continued to be intensely, shall we say... humbling.
> 
> So I'll be continuing on the two-day release cycle until the end — but there's not much left now. I was absolutely thrilled at the responses to the last chapter, and I'm genuinely curious how many readers I have (every time I think I know who's watching, someone new chimes in in the comments and I get so PUMPED!).
> 
> I'm thrilled to have everyone reading along with me as I reach the end. I'm planning to write up some kind of a summary post (maybe on Medium? TBD) discussing how I tackled the writing process -- it's exceeded so many of my expectations, and 1) people might find it useful 2) I want to brag about it and 3) I wanna nerd out about Animorphs a little bit more.
> 
> Four chapters to go. Thanks for reading.
> 
> Next chapter to be released Monday, Jan. 21 at 9 p.m. ET.


	60. A Predator

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rachel pursues the Drode.

**** As I sprinted through the jungle, I realized that I was following the same path I had followed when I first left the warehouse, when my mind was broken. I could hear the Drode ahead of me — and I knew that he could hear me too, from the way that his breathing kicked up a notch, and he began to emit these small, _immensely_ satisfying squeals of fear.

This part of the jungle, for some reason, was _not_ teeming with deadly aliens. They seemed drawn to the carnage Ax was perpetuating. I thought of how bugs are drawn to zappers, or how moths are drawn to flames, and I couldn’t help but wonder if this was the same phenomenon. Regardless, the few creatures I saw were weaker than those I had faced previously, and I darted around them quickly, without slowing.

Above me, I suddenly heard an enormous explosion, and the pitch of the howling suddenly became higher. I glanced at the sky just in time to see the Blade Ship darting away from one of the Howler ships, which was on a crash course toward the surface of the planet.

“Yeah, _Chee_ ,” I whispered.

I popped out at the edge of the jungle, next to the mountain range, just in time to see the Drode disappear into the cave I had first used as an escape route.

“Oh no you don’t,” I grumbled beneath my breath, flexing my fingers around the claw. I stepped forward, an arm extended —

A rock shot for my face! I ducked at the last possible second, feeling it whiz past my cheek. I looked forward, able to see the tiny bits of color on the Drode’s face gleaming in the darkness.

“You think you can get away from me?” I snarled. “I’ll follow you wherever you go. I’ll make you wish you’d never _seen_ an Animorph!”

He threw another rock, tried to run deeper into the cave.

“There’s no point, Drode!” I called after him. “We already found the _Rachel_. I know she’s what you’re looking for. The only way off this planet is with _us_.”

He froze, and I could almost see the little wheels spinning in his head as fast as they could. 

“I’ve already helped you!” The Drode said suddenly. “You didn’t even know it! But I can help you _more_! I know… secrets!” He was nervously licking his lips. He was about ten feet inside the cavern. Any deeper, and he would have hardly any light to see by. I could understand why he wasn’t eager to back up. “Secrets about Crayak. Where he came from. How to destroy him.”

“Crayak’s been awfully quiet since we crashed on Ket,” I said, narrowing my eyes. “You’re telling me he’s still alive?”

The Drode made that keening whining sound, the one that grated on my ears. “There is one way to kill him, _one way only_! He should not have come here. He has overlooked his weaknesses. He made a mistake. Let me come with you! Let me work with you! I can be your ally!”

I didn’t believe a word he said. The Drode had proven over and over that he was a liar, and he was willing to say or do anything to give himself the upper hand.

Behind him, in the darkness, I saw a subtle, slow movement. My eyes focused, and my heart began to pound. We were being watched.

“You’ll have to do better than that, Drode,” I snapped. “Why should I believe you?”

“You of all people should _understand_!” The Drode begged. His face had changed tone. It sounded hungry now. He was beginning to hope that he had a bargaining chip with me. He was beginning to believe he would get out of this. “You would have felt it, too. The _resonance_. Of all those that served him, only I knew its source. I was the only one who understood what it meant to emerge from an event horizon. He should have stayed away. He should have — “

A jointed arm, missing a claw, cracked like a whip out of the darkness and wrapped itself around the upper half of the Drode’s body. He had time for half a scream before it cut through him like a knife through butter, slashing him cleanly in two, his face contorted into a surprised scream. I saw his little eyes still spinning even as he died.

“He should have stayed away,” he said, and then he was gone.

*

The Minotaur stood above its kill, sniffing at the Drode’s shattered flesh. In the dim light, I saw its eyes turn to me. The skin above its lips retracted into a snarl.

“HEY!” I yelled, as loud as I could, raising my arms. “Don’t you _MESS_ with me!” Don’t you _DARE!_ ”

It took a step backward, looking surprised. I snarled at it, and took one step ahead, rattling its claw in my palm.

“You see this?” I yelled at it. “I’ll take the rest of them if you don’t back off _RIGHT NOW_!”

It was amazing that it had survived — I hadn’t been sure I had properly set a timer on the force field, triggering its release after a two-hour window. It was no surprise that it had made its way to the caverns below. It had likely been frightened by the Kelbrid attack, and the passages beneath were teeming with potential meals from remnants discarded by The One.

Maybe it was my shouting. Maybe it was the fact that I stood tall, shaking my arms and soaked completely in Crayak’s blood, my blonde hair matted to my shoulders. More likely, it was the wolf, tiger, and gorilla that stood just behind me, ready to fight for my life. In any case, the Minotaur simply sniffed the air, barked at me warily, and then dragged the corpse of the Drode into the darkness.

<You done here, Xena?> Marco said. <Because, look at the time, we _really_ have places to be.>

“Yes! Sorry!” I said. The adrenaline was boiling out of me now. “I couldn’t let him get away.”

<We would’ve helped, if you had needed it,> Jake said, and I heard _pride_ in his voice.  <Good work, Rachel. Now let’s go.>

*

We jumped on the _Rachel_ just as Erek and Lourdes took out another Howler ship. Their success was unmistakable — a massive explosion, and then the howling, getting progressively higher in tone. From the bridge of the ship, I gazed uneasily at the Ellimist — he had shrunk even further, wholly absorbed by The One except for his eyes, which were almost impossible to see because of their size.

<Erek said not to try and rescue him until they’ve taken out the Howlers, which should kill The One,> Cassie told me. <We aren’t sure, but we’re hoping it will restore his powers and he can get himself out of it.>

The planet shuddered around us — Ax noted that massive earthquakes were ripping across the surface, a symptom of titanic pressures within the core that were going to tear Ket apart.

<Maybe he can rescue _us…_ > Marco muttered.

“You guys did your job pretty well,” I said. “Ramming the planet… good one. I thought you were just joking about that.”

Everyone on the bridge turned and looked at me in surprise.

<We didn’t,> Jake said. <We gained control of the bridge — but the systems were protected with a genetic lock, the same one as on the communications tower. Lourdes was trying to figure out how to disable it when we realized we were on a collision course for Ket. We made a beeline for the Blade Ship — it was easier for her to protect us with her force fields. We thought _Erek_ did it. >

“Definitely not,” I said, remembering his desperate battle in Crayak’s lair. “Erek was busy getting beaten up by Crayak — he thought _you_ did it.”

<I don’t understand,> Ax said. <Why would Crayak have crashed the ship? Who else would have been able to open the genetic key?>

We were rising, watching as Erek and Lourdes targeted another Howler ship. We were almost at a place where we could dart in, guns blazing, and tear the black tendrils from the Ellimist.

I peered across the wreckage like a hawk, looking for any sign of movement. Again, something seemed _off_ to me, but I still couldn’t quite say what. There was just littered, broken machinery. Parts and tools, metal scattered, all twisted, broken metal.

And that’s when it hit me. This wasn’t just Crayak’s ship — it _was_ Crayak himself. He was a cybernetic machine, interwoven, as the Ellimist had been, with millions of metal parts and pieces. But the metal was just pieces — it was his connective tissue that made them slaves to Crayak. It was his literal flesh that bound them and made them operate together, but in all the stretch of wasteland I could see, I saw no flesh.

_He should have stayed away._

The last words of the Drode — w _hat did they mean_? I focused on them, wondering if he would have used his final thoughts to tell the truth.

And then the answer popped into my mind.

“Ax, the wreckage!” I barked. “Do you see any kind of — something — coming from it?”

<There is an energy signal. It is very weak. I doubt that it —>

“Head for it, and go _fast_!”

<What’s going on, Rachel?> Jake said. <What are you seeing?>

I grinned at him.

“I know who crashed Crayak’s ship,” I said. “And now I know how to stop him.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Three chapters remaining. 
> 
> I've begun to start working on other projects, and it's just so strange to not be thinking about this one all the time. I can't wait for you all to see how it ends.
> 
> Six more days -- this time next week, it will all be over.
> 
> Thanks for coming along for the ride -- I hope none of ya'll minded the serialized nature of it. I couldn't have kept up with posting every day, and I don't think I could have kept the story interesting (even to myself) if I didn't operate on a strict schedule. I'm going to write more about the writing process, probably at the end of all this.
> 
> (With this chapter, I've also crossed the 100k word mark -- wild!)
> 
> Next chapter to be released Wednesday, Jan. 23 at 9 p.m ET.


	61. Justice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the wreckage, an ominous signal flickers.

The signal Ax picked up was flickering madly. In the _Rachel,_ we hurtled across the field of broken metal, slowly getting closer to it. Above us, the Chee delivered harsh justice to each of the Howler ships. Only two of them were left now, the howling a fraction of what it once was. I was sweating from the tension – if my hunch was right, we had to strike before the Howlers were destroyed, or we would miss our opportunity.

“Can you tell the Chee to stop?” I asked Ax intensely. “Or at least… slow down?”

<I have not yet been able to contact the Chee,> Ax said.

<Were their communications damaged?> Jake asked. He was still in morph — they all were. I had demanded they stay in morph.

<No… I think it is that their attentions are elsewhere.>

_Of course they’re not paying attention,_ I thought, watching the Blade Ship trade fire against the Howlers. _This is the first time they’ve been able to fight back._

<Why do we need to move so quickly?> Marco asked.

“The Drode crashed Crayak’s ship,” I said, breathlessly. “The Drode knew Crayak was going to kill him — was going to do _worse_ than killing him. He took advantage of the chaos Erek and I caused. He saw that Crayak was distracted by us — that was the only way he could trigger the collision with Ket. He was the only one besides Crayak that could have crashed the ship — he was the wildcard, remember? And then once he was on the planet’s surface, he thought he could board the _Rachel_ in the warehouse and make an escape. That’s why the _Rachel_ was here to begin with — it was an exit strategy for the Drode, in things went bad.”

<That doesn’t make sense,> Cassie said. <I mean — I could see him trying to take off from an escape pod or something, while Erek was fighting. I get why he would want to leave. But what would he gain from crashing the ship? That seems like a much bigger risk.>

“Because you can’t just _escape_ Crayak,” I said. “He’s lived for millions of years. Wherever the Drode went — he knew that Crayak would find him.”

<Pardon me, Rachel — but I do not believe that the collision with Ket has destroyed Crayak,> Ax said. <I am actually a bit surprised he has not appeared.>

“Look!” I said, pointing at the metal field of broken parts. “Crayak _was_ his ship — at least, he was literally the guts that held all of those together. But what do we _not_ see right now? Skin! Connective tissue! His freakshow version of blood and muscles and sinew all holding it together! The only thing left out there is the metal!”

<The collision weakened him somehow?> Ax said. He pointed to the flickering signal on the screen. <Is this…?>

“It wasn’t the collision,” I said, firmly. “The Drode tried to bargain for his life, right before the end. ‘ _He should have stayed away_.’ Crayak should have stayed away — that’s what he said. Crayak overlooked something — he overlooked the fact that his own trap would affect him as much as it affected the Ellimist.”

<Crayak went into the black hole,> Cassie said. <He followed the Ellimist into the same black hole that should have killed both of them — that’s how he attained the same level as the Ellimist.>

“Yes,” I said, nodding. “That was what it meant to emerge from an event horizon. Something in the space-time void — that little yellow line, all that geon stuff — _it changed them_. It changed the Ellimist, it changed Crayak — it even changed _me_ , but not as much, because I experienced it secondhand.”

<Crayak made himself vulnerable in the same way the Ellimist was vulnerable,> Jake said, sounding awed. <So when he created this trap — >

<He also gave us a way for us to kill him,> Marco said, cracking his huge gorilla knuckles. <Oh, I am ready for a _beatdown. >_

I pointed at the flickering signal. We were nearly on top of it now. “If I’m right, that’s him. That’s all that’s left of him. Once he was inside the center of the howling, he was as weakened by it as the Ellimist was. If the Chee kill the Howlers before we get there, we might lose our shot. He might regain his powers.”

<Are we _sure_? > Cassie asked. <Crayak really just… _fell into his own trap?_ >

<Crayak didn’t even know he could be hurt,> Jake said, snorting through the tiger’s mouth. <It’s like what Erek said: ‘ _The more self-assured someone is, the more likely they are to make a series of devastating mistakes.’_ Crayak doesn’t believe he can be hurt. He wouldn’t have believed the Drode even if the Drode told him the truth.>

<And the Drode wouldn’t have told him,> Marco said. <He had the ultimate trump card. The ace up the sleeve. Monopoly _get-out-of-jail-for-free_. No wonder the Drode kept that to himself. >

“Crayak should have stayed away,” I said, watching as the signal grew closer and closer. “But he couldn’t do that. He wanted to see his enemy destroyed. He couldn’t resist. He should have stayed away.”

*

What remained of Crayak’s lair was at the top of an enormous tower of wreckage, as tall as a skyscraper. Ax brought us up the sheer face of it as quickly as he could; in the background, we heard another explosion, and the howling was reduced to a tinny wail.

I put my forehead against the wall of the ship, my namesake.

“Faster,” I breathed, willing her to move. “Faster, girl.”

From the medical bay, I heard Tobias screeching angrily. The sound of it wrenched at my heart.

_I’m sorry_ , I thought. _You’re scared — do you even know what’s going on? I’m sorry, Tobias — we’ll make things easier for you soon, as soon as we can._

Ax brought the _Rachel_ down onto the edge of the tower. He had to do this part slowly — infuriatingly slowly — because we had no idea if any of this wreckage was stable. It didn’t help that from this altitude we could literally _see_ the edge of the planet heaving from earthquakes (although that was unlikely to last for long — the atmosphere was rapidly filling with ash, causing an insanely beautiful sunrise as we landed on the top of Crayak’s broken ship. It sure looked like Ket was on the verge of a full-blown meltdown).

But finally, we landed, and Ax opened the door.

<Okay, listen,> Jake said. <Ax, keep trying to hail the Chee. Cassie and I will take the lead. Rachel, you stay —>

The howling ceased.

We all looked up. The last Howler ship was falling lazily out of the sky, leaving a long trail of fire behind it.

<Never mind — go! Just GO!> Jake yelled.

*

We entered the structure, heavily damaged but still retaining a handful of traversable corridors. I sprinted down it, but quickly realized I wasn’t running fast enough. Jake and Cassie were zooming ahead in lithe, energized bodies, and Marco rolled along with surprisingly graceful movements. But me? I was still stuck in the same body that had started off this whole process — and this body was _exhausted_.

<Can I give you a hand, Xena?> Marco said. He was extending a gorilla paw. <This taxi is for hire.>

“Oh, _fine_ ,” I groaned.

<Choo, choo!> Marco said as I clambered on his back. <The King Kong express is open for business! First stop: an evil intergalactic being who might or not be invincible!>

He picked me up like I didn’t weigh anything, and we were back up front with the others, zipping along the ruined corridor. Ahead of us, we saw a room with a large doorway that hung ajar. Whatever lay beyond it glowed with a pulsating, creepy red light.

“That’s it,” I said, as we approached the door. “That’s where Crayak is.”

We only stopped so Marco could set me down and punch it open. The door blew in backwards, clattering as it rattled over the floor. In the absence of the howling, it sounded horrendously loud.

We were in Crayak’s chamber, and evidence of Erek’s great doomed battle was splashed _everywhere._ Blood covered the floor, the ceiling. Metal parts flickered with dying lights across the floor.

In the center of it all, we saw a small mole-like creature, about the size of a golden retriever, slowly writhing in a tiny puddle of brackish blood.

The four of us approached slowly, teeth bared, fists ready, my claw extended. We approached the creature and surrounded it.

It had no hair at all, just small tufts of waving, undulating skin near one side of its body. Each strand of it reached out and seemed to feel the air, sniffing it. Sometimes they dipped downwards, stirring the small patch of blood around. It had no face that I could see — just screwed up patches of flesh, interwoven together into hundreds of wrinkles and furrows. It made no sound that I could hear, except for the way it sloughed in the blood, quietly, _swish swish_. It had legs, but they were shriveled and useless. I doubted they had been used in millions of years.

<It looks like a naked mole rat,> Cassie said, in private thought-speak to us. <Is this Crayak? With all his powers gone?>

<The Ellimist told Rachel he thought Crayak was once a subterranean being,> Jake said dryly. <Seems to fit the bill, doesn’t it?>

<We should be sure it’s him,> Marco said. <I mean — I don’t know what else it could be, but if we kill him, we need to know he’s dead.>

But I knew it was him. I just _knew_ it. I knew it because he, and I, and the Ellimist too, had all been bound together by something we didn’t understand. All three of us had touched something in the space between gravity and time and life and death, and it had touched us back. It had _changed_ us. And now that the howling had stopped, I could feel it flickering in him, just a whisper. It wasn’t strong. It might even be gone forever, I realized. But I could still feel —

_Resonance_ , Jeanne had said.

Yes, that was it. _Resonance_.

With her memory in my mind, the corners of my mouth tightened, and I gritted my teeth at the lump of flesh, and I spit out a single word, dripping with disdain.

“ _Crayak_ ,” I said.

The folds of flesh around the creature’s scalp began to move and retract, pulling in and tucking around and wrinkling back into themselves. They slipped apart, revealing an eye that was far too large for the head it was part of. The iris was three quarters of it, and the whites around it were filled with pulsing veins of blood so full you could see the flow of all of it, and the color too. And something about it — maybe a trick of the light, maybe the color of Crayak’s blood — as it pulsed through the veins, it gave them an appearance of flickering, like flames on the bottom of a campfire.

I looked up at Jake. He took a step forward, gazing intently at the eye. Crayak did not make a sound. I’m not sure he could even communicate.

And then Jake turned to me, and through his tiger morph, he nodded.

I looked down at Crayak one last time, meeting his eye with mine. I thought of how many had died at his whim, just so he could feel powerful. So he could play God. How many worlds had burned, how many beings had shrieked before falling into nothingness? All of us, swallowed into the games this monster forced us to play.

I lifted the minotaur’s claw, and then I drove it down, and I avenged every single one of his victims in one powerful cut.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And boom. Crayak has been impaled on his own sword.
> 
> Two chapters remaining — they're whoppers too, around 13,000 words between the two of them. I hope the ending is as satisfying to read as it was to write.
> 
> Next chapter coming out Friday, Jan. 25 at 9 p.m. ET.
> 
> That means the final chapter will be released Sunday, Jan. 27 at 9 p.m. ET.
> 
> Thanks again for reading, and I hope you'll stick with me until the end.


	62. The Nothlit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rachel must face her deepest fear.

**** We made it back to the _Rachel_ just in time — just after Ax took off, Crayak’s leaning tower of spaceship junk was shaken by an earthquake and crashed to the surface of Ket. I wondered if Crayak himself had been holding it together, even as his power dwindled to a whisper.

I wish I could say I was relieved. I wish I could say that I was proud of myself. But all I felt was anxious, and heartbroken, and scared, because Tobias was still a hawk, he was still unable to communicate, and without a mission to run or a monster to kill — _I had to face that_.

“Ax, what’s going on with the planet?” Jake said, as we hurtled out of the sky. “I can’t even see the ground anymore.”

<I do not believe there _is_ a ground anymore, > Ax said. <Ket is becoming consumed by seismic activity — the entire planet is severely destabilized. The lack of visibility is due to the volcanic eruptions, which I estimate now cover eighty to ninety-five percent of the planet. I believe the collision of Crayak’s ship has shaken it out of orbit, which may be exacerbating the issue.>

“Where’s the Ellimist?” I asked, peering desperately at the swirling, thick ash. I couldn’t see anything. “We have to find him. He might be the only one who can help Tobias!”

<I may be able to navigate to his approximate location,> Ax said. <But — I am picking up no energy signals from it. This is possibly due to electromagnetic interference from the volcanic ash and the planet’s magnetic field. Both are impossible to discount.>

“How dangerous is it to go in there?” Jake asked.

<Extremely,> Ax said. <The risk is very, very high. We are unlikely to survive.>

Jake was silent for several seconds. I turned to him. I was ready to beg. I was ready to plead. If we had a parachute on board, I was ready to jump off the ship myself.

“Let’s do it,” he said, and he smiled sadly when my jaw dropped. “We’re going to save Tobias, period. I got him into this — a long time ago.” He looked around the room. “Are you all okay with that?”

“Yes.” Marco and Cassie both spoke firmly, simultaneously. I couldn’t help it — I grinned at them, a stupid smile plastered on my face. 

“Ax?” Jake said.

<Tobias is my _shorm_ ,> he said, sounding surprised that we even had to ask. He turned back to the console.

If we were about to die, at least we would all be together.

We positioned ourselves near the instruments, scanning the skies for something — _any_ sign of the Ellimist. Ax brought the ship down, just above the roiling, churning ash clouds.

<Preparing to enter the ash fie — >

The radio crackled to life, and suddenly I heard Erek’s voice ringing through static.

“Hey! What are you doing?! Get out of the atmosphere, the planet is about to blow!”

I leaned over Ax and punched down a button. “We’re getting the Ellimist. Go back to Earth and — “

“Way ahead of you, Rachel,” Erek said. “We just came from Ket, and we’ve got the Ellimist safely on board. _Now get off that planet!”_

_*_

We tore out of the atmosphere as fast as we could — and even then, it was a _wild_ ride. Boulders flew past us through the sky like they were being lobbed by a baseball pitcher; Ket was breaking apart into tiny little pieces, little by little. There would be nothing of it left when this part of space was quiet again.

The orbit was severely destabilized, Ax explained, which meant that, in a few weeks, the whole flaming mass of rock would go hurtling into Ket’s sun, which was not that unlike Earth’s. Even now, the planet was creeping into its gravity well. When that happened, whatever was left of The One — if there _was_ anything left — would be swallowed up by the heat, as Father had been so long ago.

We approached the Blade Ship, now in control of the Chee. It was strange to think that now, after so long, it was fully in our hands. All of our old enemies — Visser Three, Tom’s Yeerk, and any of the legions of Controllers who had traveled on this ship —anyone who might have stopped us was either dead or imprisoned. An entire world of fighting was just… _gone_.

We docked the _Rachel_ into the Blade Ship, which required some finesse, as she still bore scars from her last tangle with it. As we approached, I felt my heart begin to beat warily; what would it be like, I wondered, to step back into the place where I had died? I wished I could ask Jeanne for her guidance.

But I knew what she would have said. She would have gently encouraged me. She would have told me not to think too hard about it. If I was haunted, it would only be by my own ghost, and that couldn’t hurt me.

*

It had not been easy for the Chee to retrieve the Ellimist, and had it not been for the last few ships of the Kelbrid fleet, it would have been impossible. Erek and Lourdes, after dispatching the Howlers (none of us asked them exactly what _how_ they did that; none of us wanted to know how deeply they had leaned into their murder) had made a beeline for the writhing Ellimist, now human-sized and buried in a cocoon of black flesh.

How they had been able to rescue him from it — the Chee weren’t exactly sure. Ax had a theory though, and since he had been controlled by The One for the longest, I was inclined to believe him. It was heavy on pseudo-scientific babble, but the gist was this: The One, operating on quantum entanglement, was fully under Crayak’s control. When the Drode hurtled Crayak’s ship into Ket, compromising Crayak, he also effectively stopped The One from completing its mission. 

This didn’t stop The One from continuing to incapacitate the Ellimist; we had seen from Marco and Ax that The One didn’t need a controlling force to bind and ensnare. The One had taken the Ellimist and held him in place, and then waited for Crayak to complete the recantation process. But with Crayak dead, Erek and Lourdes had been free to blast holes into it with the Blade Ship’s Dracon beams and retrieve the old man from a soupy mess.

The Ellimist wasn’t in great shape. Lourdes had fashioned a sort of bed in the pool of the old Kandrona room, and they had laid him down on it. He was so small that he fit within it perfectly. He was on his back, head propped up, breathing very, very slowly.

We all stood around him, almost too many people for the space. Two androids, an Andalite, three battered-looking kids in leotards and a red-tailed hawk, and me, still in the uniform of Crayak’s horde, matted with dried blood.

Cassie held Tobias on a leash, having manufactured a glove that ran from her shoulder to her wrist. We had hooded him, and so he now stood there, a little unsteadily but silent. He didn’t seem afraid, and for that, I was relieved.

Jake looked at me, and nodded. “It should be you,” he whispered. “He came to you, at the end.”

I took a deep breath and nodded. It _should_ be me. I stepped forward, kneeled down, and took the Ellimist’s hand into mine.

“Hey,” I said. “Ellimist — erm, Toomin. Toomin. It’s me. It’s Rachel. Do you remember me?”

He looked so _old_ right then. The lines on his face were so deep, like canyons in the flesh. I held his hand loosely; it was incredibly light, like a bird’s wing, and the skin was paper-thin. Those great lines shifted as his eyes opened, and his small, small lips curled into a smile.

“Of course,” he said. “Rachel… _the Animorph_.”

“Yeah,” I said, and then I was smiling too. “Yeah. That’s me.”

“I made mistakes, didn’t I?” He said, his face falling slightly. “I should not have come… I should have known it was a trap… When I saw the Kelbrids being attacked, I resisted the truth. It was their wings, you see. When I saw their wings, I knew.”

“You knew they were Ketrans, once,” I said. “You knew they were your people.”

“Yes,” Toomin said. “I knew right away. I have seen them in my dreams for millions of years… of course I knew.”

“You couldn’t leave them to die. You couldn’t leave them behind.”

“Did any of them… did they…”

“They lived,” Erek said, stepping forward. “Some of them, anyway — they helped us rescue you. They fought well.”

The Ellimist sighed, and I saw how the relief poured out of him. “For so long I turned a blind eye to this place. Ignoring my pain made it feel worse, I think. I never imagined returning to Ket. And in doing so, I lost my people…” A single tear trickled down his cheek.

“You came for them when they needed you,” I said. “That was brave, even if it was wrong. It was brave.”

He smiled sadly. “Do I deserve such comfort at the hour of my death?”

His words swept through the room; Cassie gasped, and Marco made a clicking sound like he had swallowed a bug. I felt a jolt inside of me, and I suppressed the urge to throw up.

“But we need you!” I said, becoming more frantic. “Tobias, he — he’s trapped as a hawk now. The One did something to him. It changed him, and now he can’t talk to us. We can’t get through to him. We were hoping you could help him. You _have_ to help him, like you gave him the power to morph again!”

“I can try…” the Ellimist breathed. “Bring him to me.” Cassie stepped forward, kneeling beside me. Tobias detected the movement, his head moving in alert little shakes beneath the hood. The Ellimist gazed on him with an expression of extreme sadness.

“I feel kinship with Tobias. He was lost, like me, without a home… for reasons far outside his control. And he knew what it meant to _fly_ …”

He reached out and touched Tobias’s wing. It fluttered slightly. I realized I was holding my breath while watching, _willing_ , something to happen.

A single black tendril began to emerge from beneath Tobias’s feathers, reaching for the Ellimist. I pulled him backwards, a choking sound coming out of my throat.

The Ellimist withdrew his arm, which shook dangerously. The tendril withdrew, vanishing into Tobias’s body.

Of course — the Ellimist was as infected by The One as Tobias was. And if they got too close… it would be like had happened with Ax and Marco. The Ellimist couldn’t even _touch_ him.

I burst into tears.

“He _can’t_ be _gone_ ,” I sobbed. All of the pressures of the past day were rolling over me now, hitting me all at once, crashing into me like waves. Until now, I hadn’t realized just how much I had been relying on Tobias to get me through it. 

I could fight alien armies. I could crawl through the wasteland of Ket. I could stare down Crayak himself — if only Tobias was waiting at the end of all of it.

“I am sorry,” the Ellimist said, and I saw that little tears were running down his face too. “I don’t think I have _any_ powers any more. After all this… after all this… now I am just a man.”

On some level, I had known this as soon as we saw Crayak, in his decimated, natural state. Crayak had been _more_ than neutralized by the Howler’s trap — he had been hurt by it. That thing in the blood puddle inside his ship had been no threat to us. The snare Crayak had constructed from the secrets inside my mind had taken away the supernatural abilities that made both him and the Ellimist gods, and it did not give them back. And what was the Ellimist without his powers? An old, tired man.

Marco came beside me, knelt down, and opened his arms. This time, I was the one who embraced him, weeping openly and loudly into his shoulder. To his credit, he made no jokes, no sarcastic comments. And why would he? Of all of us, Marco had been the first to know what it truly meant to _lose someone._

<I do not mean to interrupt,> Ax said quietly. <It appears as if the Kelbrids are trying to contact us.>

*

The room was more than just a place to store a portable Kandrona; it was also an elegant observation deck. With a touch of a button, the roof could be converted to a sort of view screen, affording us a panoramic view of the galaxy around us. It would have been here that Visser Three stood, lazily, inside Alloran’s body, after he fed. He would have gazed upon Earth, or over the worlds around him. I imagined that he would have used this room to count the ones he would conquer.

Erek revealed the scene around us: the mottled ruin of the Ketran planet, glowing a festering red and yellow, descending slowly away from us, drawn closer by the minute toward its sun. Debris swirled around it — not just the garbage from Crayak’s ship, or the remnants of the Howlers, but the last pieces of an Andalite Dome Ship, spiraling in a doomed orbit until it all vanished together. The only movement aside from us was the Kelbrid fleet, and even that was barely more than a dozen ships. A dozen ships, when once, Cassie said, there had been hundreds.

In the end, we had all very nearly destroyed each other.

We gazed on all this, and then a signal, crystal-clear perfect Ketran word bubbled through the radio. Jake looked at me, but I shook my head, wiping away my tears. Without Jeanne to help me to navigate my own mind, I could feel the Ellimist’s memories slipping away into a quieter corner, each of them with less distinction. I tried to feed my mind the word, but it came up exhausted, empty, and filled with grief.

“It means: _Thank you_ ,” the Ellimist murmured. He was smiling. “Of course it means more than that… it is something bittersweet, too. But it is genuine. It means: ‘ _We have failed, and we have won together. Thank you for the chance to mourn.’_ ”

“We should thank them as well,” Cassie said. I smiled, wiping the tears off my face. Cassie, always the diplomat, always looking at the greater picture. Always wondering how we could be better, in the middle of it. It drove me crazy, but sometimes — (most of the time) — she was right.

Erek extended his arm gently to the Ellimist, extending a small microphone from his wrist. The Ellimist looked at it wonderingly, both amazed and overwhelmed.

“Would you like to speak to them?” Erek asked gently. “You’re the only one who knows the words.”

“This body — this — this mouth — it cannot make the sounds — “

“You can’t do worse than Rachel,” Marco pointed out. “She barfed at them for ten minutes.”

The Ellimist raised a trembling hand slowly ( _so, so slowly)_ and touched Erek’s hand.

He whispered something in his old language, and then, for our benefit, repeated it in English. _My name is Toomin. I am the last Ketran, and I am dying. Thank you for your sacrifice. Thank you for the chance to mourn. Let it pass. Let it breeze on by…_

They answered, a mournful warble crossing the emptiness between the ships to reach our ears, melodic and beautiful.

And then fire began to pour from the ships.

*

“Are they attacking us?” Jake said, instantly in charge again. The darkness around us was filled with pulsating beams of light. It almost looked like Dracon Beams, but they seemed to hold themselves suspended in an energy field. Some of them were long streaks, and others were small, throbbing dots. They were forming an incredible lattice across the sky, a pattern more intricate by the second of thousands of flickering, bursting colors.

<I do not believe they are attacking, Prince Jake — if they are, the shots are going intentionally wide. The Blade Ship’s automated defense systems have not detected a threat, and have not activated.>

“Some kind of demonstration?” Cassie asked.

“Like a 21-gun salute,” Marco said.

Beside us, the Ellimist chuckled softly, the sound choking and sad. “This is from my people. Some of it, anyway. We held tournaments for the games, sometimes. Every few years. The equivalent to your Olympics. At the end of them, we would hold a closing ceremony, to honor the winner. It wasn’t exactly like this. But the feeling… the feeling is the same. They honor us.”

“The end of the game,” I said.

“And we… “ Jake started to speak, but he stopped himself, and no one finished his thought. _And we won_ , he was going to say. But we hadn’t, not really. Not with Tobias trapped. Not with Jeanne dead. Did it really matter to save the entire universe, if you couldn’t save the person you loved?

Not to me it didn’t.

We were alive. There was that. I didn’t even get that far, last time. But we all knew it that survival wasn’t enough. It wasn’t even close to it. We would have to work hard to repair what had been broken in us. We would have to work together to keep ourselves from falling apart even more. It already felt overwhelming, but without Tobias, it was impossible.

The Ellimist coughed, and suddenly, I knew that it was almost over. His organs were failing, his mind was fading. He was realizing — _truly realizing_ — that the end of his life had arrived.

I knew what that felt like, and I remembered that he had been there for me, when I had faced it. So I took a step forward and knelt by his side, and I held his hands.

And then I thought of something.

“Crayak told me — when it came to your game, when it came to Earth — both of you were allowed to change just one thing,” I said. “What did you change?”

He smiled. Looking into his eyes was like staring into a kaleidoscope; they flickered with emotion and pain.

“The Arn,” he whispered. “I came to him in a dream. I told him I was one of his old gods. He worried about his people’s legacy, at the end. I told him about the Chee.”

My heart was pounding.

“Did you know — did you this would happen?” I asked. “The _ixcila_ — did you know it would bring me back?”

“No,” he said. “You were… you _are_ … a happy accident.”

I tried to find the words, but I couldn’t.

“I know who I am again,” I said finally, lamely. “I wish I hadn’t had to die to find that out. But — I know who I am again.”

I almost felt like I should thank him, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I had been a pawn in his game for too long. His manipulations might be over forever now, but that did not erase the fact that they had happened.

Above us, the lights from the Kelbrids began to fade. We watched their ships as they turned, accelerated, and then vanished in a burst of white Z-space light.

And then they were gone.

“My people lived…” the Ellimist murmured. His lips were moving slower now. His eyes were closed when he spoke his last words.

“What I would give to fly again… _to fly again… to fly again…_ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One chapter remains, and it's a long one. Hopefully 10,000 words will be enough to say goodbye.
> 
> I actually got emotional re-reading and editing this one tonight, how about that, huh?
> 
> There's only one very subtle callback I have to highlight because I'm super proud of it -- the Ellimist to Rachel: "You were - you are - a happy accident". This is an inversion of what he told her in #54 (and again in The Ellimist Chronicles), and it's one I'm very fond of.
> 
> Thanks again for coming with me on this adventure. It's been a blast. Sorry to leave you at such a suspenseful moment, but... I hope you'll come back in two days for the final installment.
> 
> The next — and final — chapter will be released on Sunday, Jan. 27 at 9 p.m. ET.


	63. The Last Ketran

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Animorphs journey to Earth, one last task left undone.

**** We entered into low Earth orbit, squeaking in around the South Pole, where, for geomagnetic reasons, it was easiest for the Chee’s holograms to conceal us. We were going to make a proper entrance, eventually, but at least at first, we wanted to be more subtle. We had a plan to execute, and it would be easier if we didn’t have to pose for a legion of photographs and answer complicated questions for the military.

Our task would be easier, we decided, if we had a few quieter hours amongst ourselves to attempt and accept the consequences of it. So we zipped across the South Pacific, well-hidden inside the _Rachel_ working our way north up the coast of the Americas, staying far out in the ocean. We had no way of knowing if our choice of destination would matter or not; we had discussed it at length, talking in circles, ultimately deciding that too many variables made it impossible to really _know._ But we had all spent a lot of time at Cassie’s barn, and it just felt right that we should all be there together when we made our attempt at saving Tobias. 

We came swooping in over California, at the end of March, during what looked like a beautiful day. It was warm outside, and sunny.

_The thermals will be nice,_ I thought, a small, sad smile on my face.

*

It had been a long, _long_ journey to get here, and we hadn’t been able to start right away. We lingered in space as Erek and Ax repaired the remaining damage on the _Rachel_ , most of it remaining from its original fight with the Blade Ship. We could have taken the Blade Ship back to Earth — it was in better shape, had more legroom, and it was faster. But the thought of returning to Earth in Visser Three’s old ship wasn’t appealing to any of us, and I had no interest in spending three months cooped up in the place I had died.

So we scoured the Blade Ship, and we took anything we thought might be useful, and discarded anything from the _Rachel_ we didn’t need into its main cabin.

This included the body of the Ellimist. 

Part of me didn’t like leaving him there, but as Lourdes pointed out, he was just a corpse of flesh and blood now, and a corpse posed health risks in space. So we wrapped him up in cloth, and tried to make him look dignified. Ax performed some Andalite death rituals over the body — we thought that would be appropriate, given how powerful a role Ax’s species had played in the Ellimist’s life. The rituals were performed in thought-speak, but they weren’t really words. They were feelings, colorful, beautiful and elegiac. I felt somber and exhausted at the end of them, and none of us had completely dry eyes.

*

I went inside the Blade Ship only once before we left, to lay the Ellimist on the bridge. Jake and Cassie came with me, and once we set him to rest, we paused, looking down the ship’s long hallway, at the spot where a polar bear tore me to pieces. Was there any part of the original _me_ left here, hidden among the beams, woven in with the metal floor?Invisible flecks of my blood. If they were, they were part of this ship now, along with all the others who suffered and died here.

I shivered. Cassie took my hand and squeezed it.

“It can’t hurt you,” she said. She looked at Jake. “It can’t hurt either of you.”

Jake was staring at the same place I was, and I knew what he was thinking. This ship was the closest he would ever come to getting a real grave for his brother.

“Bye, Tom,” he murmured. The air seemed to sag as tension leached out of it. We all exhaled, slowly. I half expected ghosts to rise up from the floor — Tom, solemn and sad, reaching out for us. _If you died in morph, would you come back as the ghost of an animal?_ I had never thought about it before.

And what would my ghost be like, I wondered. Would she be angry? Would she come out swinging? Would she still be fighting the war?

But nothing happened in the Blade Ship’s dead, garbage-strewn hallway, except for a few more degrees of heat slipping out into the coldness of space. Eventually, Cassie tugged gently on our hands. Jake and I followed her, grateful for her guidance. 

We had decided, unanimously, that the Blade Ship would not return to Earth. It did not even deserve a museum, Cassie reasoned, lest it risk becoming a shrine for those who had been voluntary controllers.

So, just before we left Kelbrid space forever, Ax set the Blade Ship for one last destination: the hulking, flaming mass that used to be Ket. The Ellimist’s body would meet the same fate as so many of his fellow Ketrans. We watched from the _Rachel_ as the Blade Ship surged ahead, engines on full power. We watched until it became only a speck against the surface. I thought I saw a blip of fire as it was swallowed forever, but more likely, I had only seen the small flash of a titanic volcano.

<The Blade Ship is confirmed to be destroyed,> Ax said, a few minutes later. Something seemed to ease from him. He had a tone in his voice.

“What is it, Ax?” Jake asked. “Is something wrong?”

<No, Prince Jake.> Ax said. <It is — I feel as if – I feel as if a burden has lifted. It feels like I have finally avenged Elfangor’s death.> And then, in a hurry, sounding so much like the child he had been when we found him under the ocean, and not the talented military officer he would become — <There are rituals to complete!>

“Go and do them,” Jake said. “And Ax?”

<Yes, Prince Jake?>

“Don’t call me prince,” Jake smiled. “There’s no need, any more.”

Our engines rumbled; we began to drift away. We began to move towards Earth.

“It’s over,” Jake said.

*

Later that day, after I took a hot, hot shower that left me feeling ready to rampage through the mall on a Labor Day sales weekend, I found Marco sitting on the bridge of the _Rachel._ He was watching _Titanic_ on one of its screens.

“Are you for real?” I asked, settling into a chair beside him.

“Yes, I am for real,” Marco said. “We’ve got three long months of Z-Space hops ahead of us. Any faster, and Erek thinks relativity will age our folks back on Earth by about ten years. You want to show up and have your sisters be bigger than you? Able to beat you up?”

“They can’t beat me up,” I scoffed. “Jordan quit karate after two lessons.”

I did think about it, though. “I wonder if they _will_ be taller than me? I’m still sixteen, I guess. Five years is a long time to be gone.”

“I wonder if they’ll let you buy booze,” Marco mused. “Or maybe you’ll have to wait 21 years? When is your birthday, now?”

“Ugh,” I groaned. “How am I going to be able to get an ID? Like, does a dead person have to get a new Social Security number?”

Marco laughed. “Some government lackey is going to hate you.”

_“I’m King of the World!_ ” Jack yelled from the TV.

I smiled, putting my feet up on the dashboard.

“Hey,” Marco said suddenly. “When we get back, if you want a place to live, you know, while you sort this stuff out — I have a house in Santa Barbara. Should still be mine, I haven’t been gone long enough to be declared legally dead.”

“How do you know that?” I asked.

“My mom,” he said, shrugging. “It’s six years in California, unless they changed the law. So the house should still be mine. It’s a big house, with an infinity pool. I go there on the weekends I have free. It’s quiet out there. Good place to think. Good place to fly,” He paused. “I’m going to ask Jake to live with me there for a while. I’m going to drag him out there, if I have to.”

I looked at Marco, perplexed. “Why?”

He nodded at the TV. “Because I’ve seen this movie before. The boat sinks at the end. But maybe we don’t have to, this time. There’s no one in the world like us, Rachel. We’re the only ones who can understand each other. And maybe, if we don’t split up, like we did last time — maybe we won’t lose Jake again.”

He shrugged. “I know — it’s not perfect. Ax will probably jump right back to the Andalite home world, and we can all see that Cassie’s career is about to take off, so who knows how much she’ll be around. But even if it’s just the four of us — “

“Tobias,” I said, and a part of me warmed, grateful he’d been remembered. Grateful that Marco assumed our plan would work.

“Yeah, Tobias,” Marco said. “Regardless of what happens — there’s some nice meadows out there. Even if he doesn’t — well, I think he’d be happy there. I think he’d be safe there. I think we would all be safe. And that’s what I want, Rachel. I want a safe place where we can deal with this. Where we can move on.”

“I’ll need to see my family first,” I said. And then I thought of Jeanne. Did she have sisters, wondering if she was coming home? “And there are other people I should — “

“I know — I’m not saying right away,” Marco said. “And I’m not saying you have to do it. Jake _has_ to do it. You’re just invited to the party.” He smiled.

“Okay,” I said, oddly touched. “I think… yeah, for at least a little while.”

“Good,” he said. He reached behind him and handed me a small box of _Nerds_ candy.

I gasped, opening them immediately. “Where did you find _those_?”

“Menderash seriously stashed food _all over_ this ship,” Marco said. “It’s a good thing Andalites don’t have much a sense of smell, because Ax would be ripping this place apart.”

I took a mouthful and relished in the intense sweetness.

Marco had turned back to the movie. He looked sad.

“If you think about it, we got hit by an iceberg,” he said quietly. “We got hit by an iceberg and some of us have been drowning ever since. But maybe not this time. Maybe we pull ourselves into a life boat now.”

“ _Titanic 2: Judgement Day_ ,” I said through a jumbled mess of sugar.

_“Titanic Wars: The Titanic Strikes Back_ ,” Marco said, not missing a beat.

_“Titanic Returns!”_

_“Titanics!”_

“What?” I said. I was laughing so hard that a Nerd shot up my nose and I sneezed.

“Like _Aliens_ , the Sigourney Weaver one,” Marco said.

“What, so there’s like, multiple Titanics all sinking at once?”

“And multiple icebergs,” Marco quipped. “Nobody knows what ship is safe!”

I threw candy at him, and he laughed, and I laughed, and we hung out until Jack died, criticizing the cheesier aspects of the movie, acting like teenage dweebs.

*

Less than a week after that, I was still having trouble sleeping. I wasn’t good at Z-space travel — the complete lack of day and night was messing with my internal clock. Whenever that happened, I went to sit with Tobias. I spoke to him sometimes. When I did, I tried not to let myself get too sad. I had told him what we were going to do, once we got back to Earth. I told him I hoped he was okay with it, because he didn’t really have a choice.

Mostly I just sat there with him in silence, remembering the times we had spent together during the war. Remembering how it felt to be held, and to hold him. It was a cold comfort, to be so close to him, but it was still a comfort.

Would I keep doing this, if our plan didn’t work? We had agreed that if we could not help Tobias, we would treat him as best we could, hopefully restoring his ability to fly, despite the presence of The One. If we could get that far, we would pick a nice meadow, with a good territory, and we would set him free. But even in this scenario, I couldn’t imagine being far away from Tobias. How often would I go there for a glimpse of him? To speak with him, even if he couldn’t understand me? I knew I would never stop trying to save him.

On one of those nights, as I returned to my own bed, feeling exhausted, I walked past Jake’s room, and I heard him crying.

I stopped outside his door. He was definitely weeping long, wracking sobs. Cassie had been doing her best to help him through what he was feeling, but she was quick to admit that she was no psychiatrist. Jake was putting on a good show, but we could all sensed his fear beneath that exterior. When a war was raging, Jake had a place to be. When it was over, he felt worthless.

I knocked on his door, lightly, and I heard the crying stop. I waited a few seconds, and then I opened the door, with one hand dramatically over my eyes.

“Hey, you naked or anything?” I asked.

“No,” Jake sniffled, and I removed my hand. He was lying in bed, in pajamas, and he looked _so young_ just then. His eyes were red from crying, and he was sitting against the wall, with his feet pulled up to his chest.

I walked over to the bed and climbed in. “Scoot over,” I said, and in a minute, I was sitting next to him. “Nightmare?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Jake said. He was breathing shallow breaths. “Well, kind of. I don’t think I’m actually asleep when I get them. It’s like… my mind starts to shut off, like I’m about to fall asleep… and then all these things start crawling out of it. Stuff from the war. Tonight it was the Auxiliary Animorphs. I watched them getting torn apart, and it was all my fault. They were begging me to help them, and I couldn’t. They were getting obliterated, right in front of my eyes. I didn’t even _see_ that happen in real life, but I see it now. It’s so clear.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I said: “It’s over. It’s over now.”

“I _know_ it’s over!” he replied, his voice filled with frustration. “We held memorials. I went to as many of the funerals as I could. You know that some of them were on the same day? The funeral homes were so full, the families had to take what they could get. I couldn’t go to all of them. I couldn’t be there for them. I couldn’t stop the Yeerks from — “

He was spiraling again, so I wrapped my arms around him and pulled him as tightly to me as I could. Jake wasn’t crying anymore, but he was shaking badly. I still didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything. I don’t know how long we stayed like that in the darkness, with him in my embrace, his body shaking slowly toward exhaustion.

After a long time, he whispered, “ _Why do I miss it?_ ”

“What?”

“The war. _Why do I miss it?_ Even now, even as I can see their faces ripping apart inside my head, there’s part of me that wants to go back. It wants to keep making decisions. I can’t turn it off, Rachel. Underneath all the blood, it’s still there.”

He looked at me like Jake never had, his face filled with raw, naked fear. “Before we left Earth to find Ax… I used to tell myself that it was the Yeerk. I imagined that the Yeerk was still inside of me. I told myself that it was the Yeerk who wants me to make the decisions that kill. Maybe it’s him and not me. I know that doesn’t make sense.”

“You were in pain,” I said.

“But when I was controlled by Crayak, inside of The One… _it was still there_. I still wanted to go back to the war. I got lost in it. I think that’s why I didn’t wake up when you first pulled me out of it. I was replaying battles. I was so deep in them that everything else was just… peripheral. _I gave up_. I went so far into the war, and I was never, ever going to come back. If Cassie hadn’t infested me, if she hadn’t dragged me kicking and screaming out of my memories — “

“But she did infest you,” I said, firmly. I wasn’t going to let Jake go down this particular _what-if_ path, not if I could help it. “And you came back to us, and you helped us when we needed you the most.”

“It’s all the same,” he said. The pathetic misery in his voice infuriated me, but I vowed to keep my temper in check.

“It was _not_ all the same,” I said, as evenly as I could. “The old Jake — the Yeerk War Jake — he wouldn’t have left me in the _Rachel_ when the rest of you went into Crayak’s ship. He would have brought me along and kept me as an ace in his pocket, because the stakes were too high. You would have used me, like you used me back then. _But this time, you didn’t do that_. This time, you gave me a chance. You gave me a _choice_ , Jake. And yeah, it might make you worse as a general, but it makes you better as a person. But you know what? We _always_ need better people. We hardly ever really need great generals, and it wasn’t fair to you that we forced you to be one.”

We sat again in silence, each of us working through our own thoughts. I was filled with _anger_ , not at Jake, but at Crayak and the Ellimist, and the Andalite military, and at the Yeerks. All of us had been caught in their power plays, their machinations, their disastrous and vain attempts toward honor. All along we had fought to just stay alive — and when we finally won that right, people like Jake found themselves so screwed up that we didn’t know how to back to something like normal.

And it wasn’t just Jake, I realized.

“I miss it too,” I whispered. “I miss having the power… I miss the _blood_ , Jake. Even though I know it’s wrong, I still feel it. And I think — no matter what happens next, I’ll always miss it. Lourdes thought she could help me put it behind me with her memory tricks, but I don’t think that was ever really possible. It’s like the war woke part of me up, and it won’t go back to sleep.”

“How do you _stand_ it?” Jake asked.

I thought of Cassie, badly dressed in Rachel morph, ready to walk into the maw of a monster. I thought of Jeanne in the seconds before Crayak effortlessly wrenched me out of existence, using the instant of her death to offer me strength. I thought of Marco, weeping in my arms, finally free of The One.

“I remember the people I love,” I said. “I remember how much they love me. And I remember how I much I love them. We fought for them, and I think maybe, maybe it’s their turn to save us, now.”

I thought of my little sister sweetly asking Lourdes to protect me. She couldn’t have known the ramifications of that statement, how it would inspire a tiny act of kindness that would forever change the course of galaxy. That was what the Ellimist — and Crayak too, I suppose — had talked about. Tiny accidents that altered the flow of spacetime.

We sat for another few minutes in silence, but the truth was, I _was_ getting tired now, in both body and mind, and unless Jake was in a _really_ bad place, I didn’t particularly want to spend the night cuddled up with my cousin. So I extricated myself slowly, and Jake pulled back, leaning against the wall.

“Did Marco tell you his plan?” I asked. Jake nodded. “Are you going to take him up on it?”

“Yeah… I mean, there’s some stuff I gotta do first, but… yeah,” Jake said. “For a little bit, at least. I didn’t really have a choice, though. He threatened to ‘ _King Kong me back there!_ ’ if I refused. Which I think means he would knock me out and abduct me in gorilla morph.”

I laughed. “Not subtle. I like it. I’m going to stay with you all too, for a little while.”

“That’d be good,” he said.

“Good night, Jake,” I said, and I went back to my room.

*

I spent some long days with the ship’s computer, probing it for information on what really happened on Earth after I died. I would still be far behind on the news; the data banks only went up to the day the _Rachel_ left to pursue the Blade Ship. I browsed through headlines, forcing myself to read the politics and economics sections along with _Fashion_ and _Style._

But humanity didn’t seem all that different, despite the fall of the Yeerks. The news of the alien invasion, and the subsequent way we had fought it off, had been big news for maybe two months, until people started feeling safe again. After that… I guess they started forgetting about it. Reading these headlines, it was like a hurricane had struck some far flung place and ripped it to shreds. 

_Oh no!_ Said everyone who wasn’t there. _That’s awful!_ And once they had felt enough concern, they turned to the next article in the newspaper.

The thought made me angry at first, but eventually, it just made me sad. I knew the Yeerk invasion had been largely localized on Earth, and the Animorphs and I had had the unlucky break of being at Ground Zero.

“Hey, Rachel.”

It was Cassie, coming up to the bridge and slipping into the seat next to me. “Whatcha working on?”

I sighed dramatically, lifted up my hand and pointed to a black-and-white advertisement that had been scanned along with the article. “These purses were _40 percent off._ They are _so cute_ , but I just _had_ to be dead during the sale. You might say… it _kills_ me.”

She rolled her eyes. “Leave the jokes to Marco.” She looked at the ad. “Besides, those purses are _so_ three years ago. Nobody does the straps like that any more. They’re longer, now.”

My jaw dropped, and then I groaned in a mocking, agonized fashion. “It finally happened! Cassie knows more about fashion than I do! The student has become the master! I am obsolete!”

She laughed. “Oh, shut up. They actually make diplomats take a class in some of this stuff. It turns out, fashion is _highly_ important when dealing with another race.”

“I’ve been saying that for years!” I exclaimed.

She snorted. “So all those trips to the mall were preparing me for space diplomacy? Mhmm.” She leaned forward, to see what I was reading — it was an article about Visser Three’s trial. “Oh. _That_.”

“They really locked him up in Kansas?”

“Yeah. Maximum security, solitary confinement. Kandrona bath every three days.”

Since the article had been largely written from inside of a courtroom during a high-profile case, it only contained artists’ renderings for photographs. One of them was a tiny box, on which I could see the floating outline of a Yeerk.

“It’s weird to see him like that,” I said, scrutinizing it. “We were afraid of him for so long.” I was remembering the way his subordinates had feared him; Visser Three had a penchant for killing first and asking questions later. “Do you think he really deserved to be locked up? Or should they have killed him?”

Cassie shrugged. “It wasn’t up to me. They brought him to the Hague. They got him a lawyer. They asked us what he did, and we told them. And the judge sentenced him. That’s justice. What would you have done?”

“I would have — “ I was about to say that I would have bought the cutest hiking boots and squished him under them, slowly, until parts of his body ran out the sides. But I was also thinking about Crayak, and all that he had showed me in his demented _James-Bond-villain-explains-it-all_ speech. I was starting to wonder how much of our experiences had been truly unplanned, and which parts had been manipulated. The Yeerks had been manipulated too — they had been forced into aggressive parasitism, and they had followed the natural path it led them down.

It wasn’t enough to give me empathy for Visser Three, not by a long shot. The choices he made had been cruel, sometimes arbitrarily so. A thousand times, a _million_ times, he could have chosen a better way, but as far as I knew he always trended toward more chaos, more death, even when it could not possibly have benefitted him. But, if I followed that line of thought, didn’t I have a choice too? And if I were to kill him, even if it was in vengeance — did that make me, in some ways, similar to him?

“I don’t know what I would have done,” I said, finally.

She nodded, and wisely dropped the subject. 

After a moment, she said, hesitantly, “I’ve been talking to Jake.”

“Oh yeah? Are you two…?”

“No, not even close. But we are friends now. We’re _talking_ now. He’s trying, or maybe I just understand him a lot more, since I, well…” she screwed up her face into a grimace. “ _Infested him_. Ugh, that sounds _so_ gross.”

I laughed. “That’s good, though?”

“Yeah. I mean, the man needs a therapist. A _good_ one. I haven’t brought it up with him yet, but I get the feeling he’ll agree, if I make it easy for him. He’s more willing to accept _help_ now. I tried, after we won, but… I couldn’t get through. I didn’t understand it then, but I do now. He couldn’t go back yet. He was just waiting for the next war, and when it didn’t come right away, he got lost.”

“And when it did come… he dove right back in,” I said.

She nodded. “Yeah. Yeah he did.” And after a moment, she said: “I think you should see someone too, Rachel.”

“Why?” I asked, surprised, as the grizzly reared up in me. “You think I’m crazy?”

“No. I think you’re a sixteen-year-old girl who has already gone through more than most people go through in their entire lives. Do you remember, after we picked you up from the crystal on Ket? Do you remember what I told you?”

I did, and I shuffled uncomfortably. “Yeah. You said I had… scars.” _Scars you couldn’t see. The deepest scars of any of us._

“And I meant it. And you _still_ have those scars, Rachel. They don’t just _go away._ Sometimes crap gets in there and gets stuck inside. Sometimes you have to open them up again and clean them out. Just think about it, is all I’m saying. I’ll help you with it, the same way I’m going to help Jake.”

I shifted in my chair, feeling my face red and hot. Was I really _afraid?_

I, Rachel, had walked bravely into the lair of the most terrifying monster in the universe, and yet going to see a mental health professional made me uncomfortable.

“Okay,” I grumbled. She smiled and stood up.

“You know this idea Marco has?” I asked her.

She smiled. “Yeah, I know.”

“Are you going to — wait. I know that look. Was it _your_ idea?!”

“I might’ve suggested something like it,” Cassie said. “But he hit the ground running, with it. You know, despite the fact that he spent all his time after the war flirting with supermodels and going on Leno, I think he actually _missed_ us.”

“So you’ll be there?” I said.

She nodded. “Yeah, I’ll be there. Through the first part of it, at least. Through the hard part.” She squeezed my shoulder, smiled at me, and then left the bridge.

I stared at the newspaper on the console, slowly losing myself in thought.

In the construction site, when Elfangor plopped down in front of us, and offered us the power to morph, he had given us a choice. Except, as Marco had pointed out back then, it was never _really_ a choice. We had to become the Animorphs, or else we, and everyone we loved, would die, infested by Yeerks or obliterated by Andalites. All of it driven by the games of the Ellimist and Crayak. We had no choice but to play.

But where did that leave us now? With the puppeteers dead, no one was pulling any strings anymore. _It meant we were free_ , I realized. Maybe for the first time in our entire lives, our threads were spooling out in spacetime unwatched and untouched. Nothing existed that could pluck them. Nothing existed that could interfere with them. Everything that happened, from this point forward, would be a product of our efforts.

The thought made me both giddy, and terrified, and it’s the only way to explain what I did next, when Ax unexpectedly joined me.

“Rachel, do you have a m-m-moment?”

I rolled my head back, smiling at him.

“I’ve got another two months, Ax-man. What’s up?”

He was in his human morph — he had been spending an increasing amount of time in it lately. He said it was for the experience of eating the food, but part of me also wondered if he kind of missed it. He was carrying some kind of backpack on his shoulders, but it was upside down, so it looked hilariously out of place.

“I have s-something I w-w-would like to discuss with you.”

I took one look at his eyes, and my smile fell away. Whatever Ax had come to tell me was deadly serious. He shuffled the backpack to the floor, flipping it so it was right side up.

“I f-f-found it,” he said. “Inside the B-blade Ship.”

He undid the zipper slowly, intentionally, and opened the backpack so I could peer inside. When I realized what he was showing me, I felt the blood draining out of my face, and the world went a little bit quieter.

“R-r-rachel?” He was looking at me, expectantly. He had been saying something, but I hadn’t been listening. I was focused on the contents of that bag.

It should have been _obvious_ what to do. But suddenly, at such a critical moment, I found myself paralyzed by indecision. Memories roared through my head, the loudest they had been since the first hours after I had come back from the dead. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t give Ax an answer to his question.

_I have a choice now_ , I reminded myself. _There is no Crayak. There is no Ellimist. This is all up to me._

“Let me think about it,” I finally mustered. Ax nodded, zipped up the bag, and retrieved a Little Debbie cake from the side of it. He fumbled with the plastic packaging, and then the two little black cakes fell into his lap. He shoved one of them into his mouth, and was about to shove the other when he paused, considered, and then extended it to me.

I didn’t really want it, but I was barely thinking about him anymore, so I reached out and took it from him.

We ate silently on the bridge of the _Rachel_ , lit by the soft glow of Z-Space.

*

We didn’t interact much with the Chee on the way back. Part of that reason was because Erek and Lourdes were running every kind of diagnostic test on themselves they could think of, using the Pemalite crystal. Apparently, when Ax had arrived back at the _Rachel_ tucked within Crayak’s ship, crystal in tow, they had been able to use it to quickly fix the worst of the damage caused by Crayak and the Howler/Kelbrid/Andalite battle. But the repairs were only meant to be temporary, and it took considerably longer to restore some of their abilities.

But that wasn’t the only reason the rest of us avoided the Chee (or, at least, Erek). They still made us uncomfortable, for many reasons. We fought together against Crayak, sure, but now that the universe was saved, what was left to really discuss? The end of the Yeerk war on Earth had _happened_ , and I didn’t think we would ever really get past it.

About two months in, Jake called a big meeting of everyone to discuss the Chee, because he wanted us to get our stories straight before we landed back on Earth.

“So I guess I might as well come out with the question we are all wondering,” Jake said, zeroing his focus on Erek and Lourdes. We were inside the medical bay, where Erek and Lourdes had set up defacto Chee recharging stations. “Are you planning to reset your programming, or will you retain ability for violence?”

Erek and Lourdes shared a glance, but this question couldn’t have really surprised them. “What would you prefer?” Erek asked Jake.

“Honestly?” Jake said, exhaling slowly.

“Yes.”

“Honestly, I don’t care if I ever see you again,” Jake said. “I’m grateful for everything that happened on and above Ket. We would all be dead without you, or caught up in some sick Crayak mind game. _Everyone_ would be dead without you.

“All that being said — once we’re back on Earth, I think we should go our separate ways,” Jake said.

“After Cassie’s barn,” Lourdes said.

“Yes,” Jake said, nodding. “I know that I could ask you to restrict your programming again — but I’m not going to. Maybe it’s dumb to just accept that two high-powered androids can run around Earth unchecked, but, first of all, I can’t make you do what I say. And second — you’ve been just as dangerous to us in the past with your non-violent programming. So what I’m trying to say is: it’s up to you, but I — at least me, personally — don’t want to see or hear from you again. Ever.”

Erek nodded slowly. “That is fair.” He glanced at Lourdes, who nodded. “We have been discussing this, as you have likely imagined. For the time being, we will not reset our programming. We want to remain secret, and to rejoin the rest of our people.”

“One year,” Lourdes told Jake. “Erek and I have both agreed to stay the current course for one year, and then to re-evaluate. We will keep the Pemalite crystal safe. We will not tell the other Chee about it.”

“They would think us insane,” Erek said, wearing a small smile.

“Yes,” Lourdes agreed. “But, as Erek said, we have been talking, and we feel that our people have taken one approach to life for a very long time. It is time for a change, but a slow one.” She smiled. “Our long lifespan lends itself to such an experiment.”

“Just be careful,” I blurted out. I was thinking of Erek, on Ket, shortly after we had crash landed. “Sometimes, when you start — when you start fighting — it gets hard to stop.”

She reached out her hand, and I took it. She smiled at me, and though her look was warm, I still felt a slight chill run down my spine. Cassie had told me about Lourdes, about what she had done to Crayak’s stampeding hordes inside the huge room in Crayak’s ship. Cassie told me how Lourdes had torn through them like paper — _Like an angel of death_ , Cassie said — obliterating, roaring, cutting. And then, gathering Jake, and Cassie and Marco on the Blade Ship and wrapping all of it in her force field. She had accomplished in a span of minutes what none of us could have ever done. A Chee on the warpath was nothing to mess with.

“I learned a lot from you, Rachel,” she said. “Both before your death, and after it.” She pulled me in and embraced me, and to my surprise, I felt genuine affection for her. “I can control this power,” she whispered into my ear, and I believed her. “Just as you can control yours.”

As we hugged, I whispered into her ear: “You should come by the house sometime. See my sisters again, if you want. I’d like it if they — I’d like it if they knew what you did for me.”

She smiled and nodded, and I let go, genuinely moved.

We spent the remainder of the time getting our stories straight. We decided there was no way to explain to the government what had really happened — they had never been told about the Chee, or the Ellimist, or Crayak, and we didn’t have a lot of proof to support some of the fantastic things that had happened. Plus, if things worked out the way I wanted them to, they need never know they had existed.

We didn’t decide on a lie, not exactly, but we did settle on a modified version of the truth. 

Jake, Marco, Tobias and Ax had been taken captive by a terrifying creature called “The One,” which had kept them in various states of suspended animation for the time they had been away. _Truth_.

The Howlers that attacked the Andalite Dome Ship — and Cassie and Erek — had been soldiers of The One. _Not true_ , but close enough.

Cassie barely survived the battle, arriving on the rendezvous planet: Ket. Truth. She found that The One had a genetic facility, where it was growing Yeerk soldiers and seemed to have been for a long, long time, which seemed to put it fully in league with the Yeerk invaders. True.

She also found me, and Jake, and the rest of the Animorphs, in suspended animation, along with the Blade Ship, in the facility on Ket. Apparently The One, in league with the Yeerks, had been supplying soldiers for Yeerk hosts, and it was where the Blade Ship had fled to following the end of the Yeerk war. I had _not_ been killed at the end of the war, but a duplicate of my body, grown in the facility in Ket, had been jettisoned and cremated. Once freed, the six of us contacted the Kelbrids, who were desperate for assistance, avenged the fallen Andalites, stopped The One and flew the _Rachel_ out of there. Ket, which had been severely destabilized in the battle, was destroyed when it collapsed into the gravity well of the sun.

It was a great story. We decided it hit close enough to the truth so Andalite intelligence would support it. Plus, it checked all the boxes for great Andalite war stories, Ax said. Andalites had died gloriously in battle, and Ax, a hero, had sought and won vengeance for their cruel deaths.

Marco agreed: “A couple plot twists, a resurrection, and we got ourselves a prime-time soap opera.”

We had decided to submit to any physical or mental tests they wanted to put us through. Erek had checked all of us, and there were no lingering effects aside from my (now healing!) ribs and cuts. Even that little yellow line, the geon frequency from the _ixcila_ , was gone from any readings. That surprised Erek, but it didn’t surprise me. The Howlers had neutralized that energy within the Ellimist and in Crayak — it made sense that it would have had a similar effect on me. That meant I couldn’t hold minds inside my own anymore, and I was likely not destined to be some kind of super being capable of traversing the stars.

If we could get Tobias back, I was okay with that.

*

Like I said before, we came into Earth orbit silently, hidden by the Chee. Eventually, we would have to fly in on everyone’s radar, telling our story immediately. It was liable to cause a sensation, we knew, one that would rival what had happened at the end of the war. And if we couldn’t help Tobias — well, we didn’t want him to be there for that.

I had decided, firmly, that if we couldn’t save Tobias, we would report that he had died in battle, killed in the first encounter with The One. And he would live out the rest of his life in a meadow in Santa Barbara. I would visit him whenever I could, and no one would ever know that the bird had once been a boy. I didn’t like the idea of him being forgotten like that — it made me sick to my stomach. But it would be far, far worse if the government knew what he was, if they knew that The One was still twisting and snarling between his cells. If Tobias were to return to Earth, he would be poked and prodded for the rest of his life, and I would never see him again. Or he could be killed, for what he was. Killed and dissected and studied.

I wasn’t about to let that happen. He would be as free as he could be. I had promised him that, and I meant it.

As we entered the atmosphere, I thought of all that I needed to do, regardless of whether or not our attempt at saving Tobias was successful. I needed to come back from the grave. I needed to visit my parents again, and I needed to hug my sisters. And I needed to find out if Jeanne Girard had a mother. Wherever she was in the world, I needed to see her. I couldn’t tell her the full truth about what Jeanne had done, but I could tell her enough. I needed to tell her that her daughter had fought bravely. I needed to tell her that she had _mattered_.

*

We landed in the woods behind Cassie’s barn when no one appeared to be home. We had planned for that, of course, and Cassie was ready to explain as much as she could to her parents if they were there, but they weren’t. We all came out of the _Rachel_ together, standing in a single-file line. Cassie walked in front of us, carrying Tobias. His legs were lightly bound together; he could sort of fly now, and if we lost him at this stage, it would be a disaster.

Even though the property around us was straightforward, with small woods and trees, it took my breath away; compared to the wasteland of Ket, this was Earth as a paradise. The temperature was just above 70 degrees, and the air tasted fresh and clean. And it was familiar, too — my eyes welled up at the sight of her barn, quiet in the breeze. Memories, beautiful and painful, ran through my mind.

“Are you ready?” Jake asked me. I took a deep breath and nodded. Realistically, we only had one one shot at this. If it didn’t work…

_Don’t think about that_ , I told myself. _It has to work._

Cassie paused about twenty feet ahead of us, before glancing back and looking questioningly at Lourdes. Lourdes nodded, and Cassie slowly knelt down and set the trembling hawk on the ground. She removed the hood, but left the bindings on his legs. He was used to them by now, and so he stood there, blinking in the sun, confused and afraid by these predators towering over him. Cassie backed away quickly, the tiny hawk hood falling to the ground.

Lourdes looked at me. I nodded, and I held my breath.

She stepped in front of us, slowly lifting her arms. I saw that they glowed a light green now, just the touch of an aura hovering above her skin. As she raised her hands, I saw something forming between them; cracking green energy, intricate and strangely beautiful, cords of green light leaping from her fingertips and curling across each other, interacting with each other. The patterns they made were delicate and gorgeous.

It had been my idea. It was a burst of frantic, panicked thought inspired by the last words of the Ellimist. In the last seconds of his long, long life, the Ellimist dreamed of his time as Toomin, riding the thermals of Ket, soaring gloriously through the sky. And as he had said, he was just a man now, no different in mortality than any one of us.

So I had grabbed Lourdes arm and I had begged her, with just a few words. And she, to her credit, understood immediately. We did not discuss the ethics or the morality of what we were about to do. But even so, I thought it was okay, because like it or not, the Ellimist _owed_ us after everything we had done for him.

So Lourdes knelt over Toomin’s body, took his head in her hands, and like she had done for me in the Blade Ship, she had read and recorded the brain-wave patterns from his mind.

Now, Lourdes brought her arms down swiftly. Between her and Tobias, the air shimmered as Toomin’s _ixcila_ fluttered through it.

*

The hawk responded, stumbling on his bindings. He cried out once, a pained, terrified cry, and I impulsively took a step forward before Jake stopped me. He shook his head slowly. We couldn’t interfere during this part of the process, Lourdes had said — that was critical. For a successful _ixcila_ bonding, it must happen of its own accord.

Realistically, I didn’t know how much of a chance we had for it to work. I had badgered Ax about probabilities and statistics, a fruitless conversation in which I had annoyed him into telling me to _go away._ There had never been an _ixcila_ like this made, and as far as anyone knew, there had never been one that bound to the mind of an animal.

_But why shouldn’t it?_ In his original form, the Ellimist had not looked so unlike a red-tailed hawk. They looked so alike that I had even mistaken the symbols onsignposts of Ket for one of them. An _ixcila_ would be drawn to something resembling its original form — the Ellimist had not had a true Ketran body in millennia, surely it would be drawn to it, I reasoned.

But now, standing on the edge of this grassy plain, watching the bird I loved slump forward drunkenly, I questioned all my motivations. What if I had made things worse? What if the _ixcila_ did not implant? What if it _did_ implant, but they were all still trapped inside The One?

Cassie must have seen my panicked look, because she reached out and squeezed my hand. I squeezed back with hardly any strength.

The hawk moved, lifting one leg, testing it out, still bound. He took a small, small step forward.

And then abruptly, he looked up and saw us, and he uttered a wild, piercing cry.

_It hadn’t worked,_ I thought. I started to shake violently, and Marco grabbed me from the left side, keeping me from falling. In a few seconds, I knew I would be a mess of tears, inconsolable.

And then the hawk began to change.

*

I started screaming. I couldn’t help myself. I wasn’t even standing on my own, I was caught in Marco and Cassie’s arms, and I was wailing like a child, like a wounded animal. Pain and joy and raw _feeling_ were all trying to explode out of me at once, flowing out of me faster than I could make sense of it. Marco was laughing too, laughing and yelling and cheering, and Cassie was rapid-fire yelling these little shrieks of joy into the air. And then Jake was in the middle of us, and he was throwing his head back and shouting along, all of it wordless, primal sounds.

We were like a pack of wolves, howling at the moon.

We were so loud that we couldn’t hear the crunching slough of bone and flesh as Tobias’s beak folded back into his head, and his legs extended outward, enlarging into feet. His wings drooped out into arms, the feathers becoming something like a strange tattoo on top of his skin before vanishing entirely. It was a slow, slow morphing process, the longest I could remember, nearly ten minutes. Five minutes in, and all of us were huddled next to each other, our voices hoarse. We watched the morph complete, slowly, slowly, slowly.

And then, suddenly, he was Tobias again.

*

Tobias lifted his hands — _his human hands! —_ my mind cried out, and looked at them wonderingly. And then he looked up, and our eyes met, and I saw the glimmer of _recognition_ I had been waiting for. I saw it immediately; I had been searching for it for weeks.

I broke away from the others, sprinting forward, and then I was finally next to him, around him, burying him into an embrace and weeping openly into his shoulder. I was trying to tell him I loved him, but my words kept getting caught in my sobs. He was trying to talk to me, too, but at first I couldn’t hear him. After a minute, I heard: “It’s okay, Rachel, it’s okay, I’m here. I’m _here._ ”

I pulled back from him, still unwilling to let go. Again I looked into his eyes, and he smiled at me, that strange, crooked, broken smile that I had fallen in love with over and over again.

“It’s you?” I whispered. “It’s really… really _you_?”

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s really me.” He lifted up a hand and tapped at the side of his head. “And I’ve got some company, too.”

“Is he mad?” I asked. I had worried about this too, ultimately deciding that I didn’t care what Toomin wanted. But now that we had succeeded…

“He’s _thrilled_ ,” Tobias said. “He’s laughing — he’s so happy.”

“Good,” I said, breathing a sigh of relief. “I didn’t know what else to do. We couldn’t just let you go. We couldn’t just — “

“I heard you,” he said. “Every night you came to me — I knew. I could hear you, and I wanted so badly to talk to you. I wanted to be with you. I did everything I could to break through, but there was something about the fusion of the hawk and The One… I couldn’t get past it. It was like I was a prisoner in my own mind, and the hawk was in charge.” He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter, now.”

“I love you,” I said.

“I love you, too.”

And then we kissed, an awkward, sloppy, teenage kiss, the best one of any life I had ever had.

*

And then the others were surrounding us, hugging Tobias. Ax had an intense moment where they embraced, and he repeated some kind of Andalite ritual in his mind; _A reuniting of shorms_ , he called it.

When some of our euphoria had settled, Lourdes came over and asked a few questions about the _ixcila_ , but by all metrics, Toomin had successfully bonded to Tobias. And it was _just_ Toomin now, Lourdes confirmed. Tobias had the memories and personality of the ancient being inside him, but he had none of the Ellimist’s powers.

“It’s fairly similar to what happened to you,” Lourdes had explained, “Except that your implantation was rushed and botched. Like you lost your morphing power, he has not retained any of his abilities with space-time manipulation. In this case, the _ixcila_ was taken after the geon energy had been neutralized.”

Lourdes carefully informed Toomin in Tobias that, ideally, at some point agreed upon between Toomin and Tobias, Toomin was expected to leave Tobias’s mind. This would take place in the same manner that an Andalite named Aldrea had left Cassie’s mind long ago. We could continue to preserve his _ixcila_ , Lourdes explained — or he could choose to simply complete his death.

In preparing for this moment, I had hardly considered this; now, it worried me. What if the Ellimist was unwilling to leave? We had no real ability to force him out.

But Tobias was smiling, and shaking his head.

“He is ready for the end,” Tobias said. “He says he — he says he has had a long, long life, and he is ready for the end of it. He wants to know what comes next. He is ready to rejoin his race. He just wants to do one thing first.” Tobias smiled. “He wants to fly again.” 

He looked at me questioningly.

I squeezed his hands. “Go — you should go. It’s okay. Now that I know you’re okay — oh my God, _it’s okay_.”

“I think she’s trying to say that it’s _okay_ ,” Marco said.

“Go flying,” I said, ignoring him. “We’ve got time, now. No fighting. No war. We can figure this out. We’ve got time. We’ve got time.”

He embraced me for what felt like an hour, and then he pulled away. I watched as the feather patterns moved across his face, and his nose elongated into a beak. 

And then I looked away, because morphing is gross.

He was a hawk again in minutes, shuffling ungainly in the grass. I lifted him by his body, and thrust him up into the air. His wings expanded, and after he beat them heavily, I saw him gain loft. In minutes, he was high above us, whooping with joy.

<This is the best!> Tobias exclaimed. <I’m free! I’m free!>

He flew in lazy circles around us, laughing and whooping, celebrating the final flight of the last Ketran.

*

Everyone else disappeared into the ship after a few moments; they were rehashing elements of our cover story and preparing for our arrival. I should have been helping them, but I couldn’t stop staring at Tobias arcing through the sky, and thinking about everything that had happened.

_We had a chance, now_. We were as free as Tobias, no longer operating at the whims of murky galactic super beings.

But we were not healed, not really. Jake still wept at night. A part of me still _hungered_ for battle, even though I knew how corrosive it becomes. I would _always_ hunger for it.

For some, war was an opportunity. For others, like me and Jake, war was a trap from which there was no escape. We would never be back to the way we were if we had never walked in that construction site. 

But maybe we could, at the very least, feel human again.

*

While these thoughts were running through my mind, Ax came out of the ship, carrying that little backpack. He sidled over next to me, kneeling gently.

<Once we announce our presence, this will be impossible to conceal,> Ax said quietly. <I will have to turn it over to the Andalite authorities. Have you made a decision?>

Delicate Andalite fingers reached into the folds of fabric, retrieving the morphing cube. This wasn’t just any _escafil_ device — this was the same cube that Elfangor had held out to us in his last moments. It was the same cube that had followed us throughout the war and unleashed such devastating consequences. This was the cube Tom Berenson had stolen and hidden deeply in the bowels of the Blade Ship, carefully concealing it from all of the Yeerk crew that he distrusted. Ax had gone looking for it when we had searched the ship, knowing that it had been unaccounted for since the end of the war.

I looked at it thrumming gently in his hands. He was offering me a choice, just like his brother had. But back then (although I hadn’t realized it at the time) it wasn’t _really_ a choice. We were tied to our destinies by forces far beyond our control.

But those influences were gone now. Crayak was dead, and so was the Ellimist, even if Toomin was free. It truly _was_ up to me. I had realized that when he made the offer to me on the Rachel, had been overwhelming and revelatory. Tobias had been my only concern, but now he was safe.

So I smiled at Ax, and I put my hand on the top of the morphing cube, and I felt it _thrum_ beneath my fingers.

And I became an Animorph.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's all, folks. We've come to the end of "The Trap."
> 
> I hope you've enjoyed this story, and please let me know what you think of the ending! I don't remember exactly when it snapped into place, but I was extremely excited for it.
> 
> I had no idea how this would work out when I started publishing last September on AO3 - and it has exceeded my wildest expectations.
> 
> Regarding the question of: "Will there be a sequel?!" the short answer is... maybe, but not any time soon. This project was started as a way for me to develop writing habits, and I'm happy to say that it's worked! I'm currently producing about 1,000 words a day of my own fiction, which may not sound like a lot but is an enormous amount for someone with a day job.
> 
> I do have an idea for a sequel... but unfortunately, it's likely to be several months away, and I do want to try my hand out on my own work, in case I've got a writing career in me.
> 
> If you want more of my fiction, follow me on Twitter (@mdxwriter) and Medium! I plan to add fiction to these accounts (although they'll likely take on a less "Animorphs-heavy" focus in the near future).
> 
> I've written two posts on Medium, one about this story itself, if you want some behind-the-scenes info: https://medium.com/@mdxwriter/the-story-behind-the-trap-87143fbe3574
> 
> And another describing the nitty-gritty part of the writing process: https://medium.com/@mdxwriter/the-story-of-the-trap-f53937aff936
> 
> And -- from the bottom of my heart, thank you for coming this far with me -- especially arlene56, whose comments directly shaped this story, and they made me a better writer. I deeply loved how much everyone cared about this tale -- my favorite were when commenters debated the next twists and turns--I just loved that!
> 
> I can't wait to see what ya'll write, and if I ever do dip my toes back into the Animorphs universe, ya'll will be the first to know.
> 
> You matter.


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